NE LEGAL BUREAU
NEW DELHI, FEB 26
The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to hear a plea seeking direction to the Centre for conducting a caste-wise 2021 census for backward classes for efficient allocation of budgetary resources and excluding the ”creamy layer” and ”non-backward class” citizens from a particular caste.
A bench of Chief Justice SA Bobe and Justices AS Bopanna and V Ramasubramanian issued notice to the Centre and National Commission for Backward Classes (NCBC) and tagged the matter along with other pending matters.
Advocate G S Mani, appearing for petitioner G Mallesh Yadav, a Telangana-based social activist, said due to lack of caste-wise survey, governments are facing a lot of difficulties in sharing the budget to every caste in backward classes for the lack of caste wise survey.
The plea said that the number of backward castes and communities was 3,743 in the initial list of Mandal Commission setup in 1979-80.
“The number of backward castes in central list of OBCs has now increased to 5013 in 2006 as per national commission for backward classes but no survey has been made by the government’s caste wise,” the plea said.
It said that as per the provisions reservation can be given to backward class and citizens of that particular caste but ”creamy layer” and ”non-backward class of citizens” in it have to be excluded.
“If the caste is to be taken into consideration then for finding out socially and economically backward class, creamy layer of the caste is to be eliminated for granting benefit of reservation,” it said.
The plea further said that central and state governments are also facing statutory and legal hurdles in decision-making for allocation of seats to backward classes in village Panchayats and municipal bodies and Zila Parishads in the absence of caste-wise census of Backward Classes.
It said that the Centre is planning to conduct the census of the country in 2021 and presently a proforma was released which containing 32 columns about the details of the SC/STs, religions like Hindu, Muslim, and Christian, etc.
The plea said that the proforma does not include columns for details of Other Backward Classes communities.
