At the all-party meeting convened by the Prime Minister to discuss quotas for the scheduled castes and tribes (SC/ST) in promotions, only the Samajwadi Party was clear in its opposition.
It’s only vocal supporter is the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) – for obvious reasons.
But almost nobody else was willing to take a stand clearly against it. The PM merely sought the opposition’s “valuable suggestions” to get around the Supreme Court’s verdict in April striking down a Uttar Pradesh decision to provide quotas in promotions.
The BJP, while paying lip-service to the upliftment of the weaker sections, muttered caveats about adhering to constitutional and legal norms. The Left too made similar proforma statements (Read here).
The undertone is clear: no party, barring the BSP, really wants to do this, but vote-bank politics is forcing them to bury their real views.
Mayawati has been at the forefront asking for a constitutional amendment to ensure reservations in promotions. AFP
The Congress is running with the hare and hunting with the hounds – since both the BSP and the Samajwadi Party are UPA backers, with one of them for it and the other against.
Every party (other than the BSP) realises that the bill to ensure this will be disliked by its base. As a senior BJP leader told Firstpost on condition of anonymity: “If you ask me privately the proposal for such a bill must not be supported. Quota in promotion, after already giving them (SC/STs) one for entry into a job, is not justified. More so because the long-term implications are unhealthy both for the structure and for governance. But that certainly can’t be our public view. We have to support, or at least seen to be supporting the idea, of advancement of SCs and STs. Remember, we have good support among these communities.”
The Congress, which traditionally has had the support of these communities, is trying to pilot the bill, to get even with BSP leader Mayawati in the game of political brinkmanship. A Congress leader said the UPA government needed to go with this bill. “It was after all the Congress which had provided reservations for Dalits and tribals at all levels. Now we can’t be seen to be lagging behind. We understand some of its adverse implications but in a democracy where you have to go to the electorate after quick intervals, one needs to be pragmatic.”
Mayawati has been at the forefront asking for a constitutional amendment to ensure reservations in promotions. The problem arose after the Supreme Court, on 27 April, in a case involving the UP Power Corporation vs Rajesh Kumar & Others, struck down a clause for reservations in promotion to SCs and STs in UP.
The Samajwadi Party says if quotas are given to SC/STs in promotion, the same have to be given to other backward classes (OBCs) as well. It also says that Muslims won’t be benefited from the reservations. According to the SP, OBCs constitute 52 percent of the population and if quotas are given to SC/STs, OBCs will be the worst impacted by this.
The Prime Minister, in his opening remarks, said he was seeking the counsel of all parties to discuss a way out of the Supreme Court’s order. Singh asked the parties to provide “valuable suggestions so that a legally sustainable solution may be arrived at”.
Though no formal announcement was made after the meeting, a minister said the government will try to present a bill by end of the monsoon session. With parliamentary proceedings being disrupted on the BJP’s insistence that Manmohan Singh resign over Coalgate, legislative work is no longer a priority for the government and the opposition. In this case it suits them fine.
“You may be aware that the government has always been committed to protect the interests of the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes and on certain occasions did not hesitate even to bring constitutional amendments,” the PM said at the meeting.
The Supreme Court, in its 1992 judgment in the Indra Sawhney case, had held that reservations in promotions are ultra vires of the Constitution, but allowed its continuation for five years as a special case. The 77th amendment to the Constitution was made in 1995 to insert clause (4A) to Article 16 before the five-year period expired to continue with reservations for SC/STs in promotions. Clause (4A) was further modified through the 85th amendment so as to give the benefit of consequential seniority to SC/ST candidates promoted by reservation, he explained.
Singh went to some length to explain the legal position. The 81st amendment was made to the Constitution whereby clause (4/B) was incorporated in Article 16 to permit the government to treat the backlog of reserved vacancies as a separate and distinct group, to which the limit of 50 percent ceiling on reservation may not apply. The 82nd amendment incorporated a proviso in Article 335 to enable states to give relaxations/concessions to SC/ST candidates in matters of promotion.
These aforesaid four Constitutional amendments were made in order to protect the interests of the backward classes, including SC/STs. The validity of all these four amendments was challenged before the Supreme Court through various writ petitions clubbed together in M Nagaraj & Others vs. Union of India & Others, mainly on the ground that these altered the basic structure of the Constitution.
The Supreme Court upheld these four amendments but stipulated that the concerned state will have to show in each case the existence of compelling reasons, namely, backwardness, inadequacy of representation and overall administrative efficiency, before making provisions for reservation. The court further held that the impugned provision is an enabling provision. If a state government wishes to make provisions for reservation to SC/STs in promotion, the state has to collect quantifiable data showing backwardness of the class and inadequacy of representation of that class.
No party, of course, is planning to prove any such thing. In electoral politics, quota politics has always needed no proof.
