Bihar Governor Rajendra Arlekar has approved the 75 percent reservation bill. Under this bill, the reservation quota in government jobs and educational institutions in Bihar has been increased from 60 to 75 percent. This bill was passed by the Bihar Assembly on October 13, 2023. After this, it was sent to the Governor for approval. The Governor signed this bill on November 21, 2023.
The gadget has been released after the reservation bill got approval from the Governor’s level. After this bill was approved, the reservation quota for backward classes, scheduled castes and scheduled tribes in government jobs and educational institutions in Bihar has become 75 percent, with 65 percent for reserved category people and 10 percent for economically weaker sections. The path has been cleared for the weaker people to get reservation.
Reservation limit in Bihar is now 75 percent
Till now the backward and extremely backward classes were getting 30 percent reservation, but under the new law this class will get the benefit of 43 percent reservation. Similarly, earlier the Scheduled Caste (SC) category had 16 percent reservation, now it will get 20 percent. Earlier there was one percent reservation for the Scheduled Tribe (ST) category, which has increased to two percent. The limit of 10 percent reservation given by the Central Government for the economically weaker general category will remain. In this way the total reservation limit has now reached 75 percent.
However, many questions are being raised regarding how it will be implemented. There are many problems in the way of implementing this Act. The biggest problem is that the Supreme Court has fixed the reservation limit at 50%. Increasing reservation on top of this is constitutionally challenging.
In fact, in 1992, the constitutional bench of the Supreme Court had decided in the decision of Indira Sawhney case that the limit of reservation cannot exceed 50 percent. This decision came on the appeal of Indira Sahni against the decision to implement the recommendation of the Mandal Commission. At present, Tamil Nadu is the only state in the country where 69 percent reservation is applicable. At the same time, on the basis of Indira Sawhney decision, the Supreme Court had rejected Maratha and Jat reservation as crossing the limit of 50 percent.
There was a lot of controversy in Bihar regarding this bill. Opposition parties had called this bill unconstitutional. He had said that this bill will promote casteism in Bihar. However, by approving this bill, the government has made it clear that it is committed to the advancement of people belonging to backward classes, scheduled castes and scheduled tribes.
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