Taxpayers

The commission did its job and submitted its report.”

In the Constitution (124th Amendment) Bill, 2019, which was passed in record time in both house of Parliament, the government identified a person belonging to an EBC as s o meone whose a nnual income is below ₹8 lakh, agricultural land is less than 5 hectares, residential house is smaller than 1,000 square feet, and residential plot is smaller than 109 square yards in a notified municipality and smaller than 209 square yards in a nonnotified municipality area.

While most Opposition groups supported the Bill, some, such as the Congress, questioned the rationale in setting ₹8 lakh as the annual income limit. In Parliament, Congress leader Kapil Sibal asked the government to raise the income tax exemption limit from ₹2.5 lakh to ₹8 lakh and sought to know if there was data on how many people possessed land and residential plots that matched the cut-offs.

In the interview, Sinho said: “I don’t remember exactly, but when I had suggested, the income limit was about Rs 2.5 lakh. But now eight years have passed. However, I don’t know how the government took a decision on the income limit.”

In the report, based on visits to 28 states over a period of four years, the Commission for Economically Backward Classes noted that the while the overall percentage of those below the poverty line (BPL) was more among the reserved categories, the EBCS within the general category “suffered low paid occupation, malnutri-