WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT
Collection of data on OBC communities is crucial to the issue of political reservation in the state as starting February 2022, 15 municipal corporations, 29 of 36 district councils and over 90 municipal councils will go to poll
ment”. Some changes were proposed to the terms of references, she said.
The SECC would have generated data about the socio-economic backwardness of various communities and helped restore political reservations for OBCS in local self-government bodies like municipal corporations, councils, Zilla Parishads and gram panchayats. At present, the Central government collects data only for Scheduled Castes (SCS) and Scheduled Tribes (STS) in the decadal census and has refused to enumerate other populations in the 2021 census. The Centre has expressed its inability to share empirical data from the 2011 census with the state citing flaws in it. This would have enumerated the numbers of each caste group across religious denominations.
The apex court on Monday struck down an Ordinance brought out by the state in September which granted up to 27% political reservation for OBC community candidates in local body polls, after the SC had, in a previous order, struck down a section in the state’s
law, which granted full reservation of 27% to OBCS. On March 4, the apex court said the quota led to a breach of the 50% ceiling on reservations when taken together with existing reservations to Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (SC/ST) candidates. It further directed the state to conduct a “contemporaneous rigorous empirical inquiry into the nature and implications of backwardness of the concerned group”.
Following this, the state constituted an MSBCC team on June 29. The commission finalized the empirical data collection norms for a socio-economic and caste census (SECC) by July-end. The census, which was to be launched almost a century after it was last undertaken in British India, was expected to cost around Rs 435 crore and cover all households. The MSBCC sent a letter to the state on July 28 also stating its infrastructure and manpower needs to conduct the survey. However, as the survey would have taken several months to complete, and a slew of local body polls are slated to be held in the coming months —
district council elections in Bhandara and Gondia as well as bypolls in 4,500 gram panchayats across the state on December 21; elections in 23 municipal corporations, 27 district councils, 298 panchayat samitis, 320 nagar panchayats and nagar councils between February and December 2022 — the state passed an Ordinance to ensure political reservation, albeit in a reduced quantum, for OBC candidates.
On Monday, the SC said that empirical data should have been collected first.
A former member of the MSCBC said that the SECC might reveal that the number of backward groups is higher than expected, which might lead to a challenge to existing reservations. A ballpark estimate of the OBC population, based on the 1931 census, indicates that the communities account for nearly around 53% of Maharashtra’s population. In Maharashtra, OBCS are divided between 350 Hindu and non-hindu classes (19% reservations) and Vimukta Jati and Nomadic Tribes (VJNT), which covers about 50 groups (11% quota).