BJP, Cong silent on sub-classification of SCs/STs; Maya, Chirag oppose order

Aditi Tandon
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, August 4
The Supreme Court's August 1 verdict allowing sub-classification of constitutionally guaranteed Dalit and tribal quotas has caught the political class by surprise with the ruling BJP and the opposition Congress yet to react officially.
The only major parties to have publicly opposed the 6:1 verdict of the apex court so far are BJP ally LJP (Paswan); Mayawati's BSP and Lalu Yadav's RJD.
LJP (Paswan) chief and Union minister Chirag Paswan has gone so far as to say that his party will challenge the verdict in the highest court and seek a review.
Mayawati has said the SCs were a homogenous group that had been historically discriminated against and any classification would be unjust. “We do not agree with the verdict,” she said on Sunday. RJD’s Tejashwi Yadav has decried the order saying it goes against the spirit of Poona Pact.
Senior BJP and Congress leaders for their part said the implication of the classification on SCs and STs would need to be carefully assessed.
More troublesome for the political class would be the SC’s urge to state governments to devise a way for identifying the creamy layer segments with SCs and STs to ensure the reservation benefits went to the less advantaged.
“The creamy layer concept is more challenging,” sources in both the Congress and BJP say as they calibrate their strategies around the SC order on the eve of Assembly polls in Haryana, Jharkhand, Maharashtra and impending J&K poll this year.
So far, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has publicly supported SC quota sub-classification only for the Madiga community of south India. The PM even directed the constitution of a committee to look at the prospect of an SC sub-quota for Madigas. The committee is working.
Within the Congress, Karnataka CM Siddaramaiah and Telangana CM Revant Reddy have welcomed the SC verdict, but party president Mallikarjun Kharge has not yet authorised an official national response.
So far as the BJP goes, sources say the SC order presents the political system with a Mandal 2.0 moment.
When then Prime Minister VP Singh had adopted the Mandal Commission report for reserving 27 per cent seats in public employment for OBCs, BJP's ideological mentor RSS, then working on a pan Hindu identity through the Ram Mandir movement, had sought suspension of the report in the wake of massive agitation by upper caste students.
“What VP Singh through mandalization of society seeks to achieve is a division of Hindus on forward, backward and Harijan lines,” Sangh journal Organiser wrote at the time.
But LK Advani, then BJP president, took a politically pragmatic stand. Since the BJP was supporting the Janata Dal-led VP Singh government from outside, Advani did not oppose the Mandal report realising the numerical strength of the middle class segment it sought to benefit.
Advani devised a middle path —the BJP would back 27 per cent reservation for OBCs, but demand sub-categorisation of castes within OBCs and a promise that overall quotas will not exceed 50 per cent. The OBC sub-categorisation as backward classes, most backward classes and extremely backward classes later became a norm.
The SC has now opened prospects of the same sub- classification for the SCs and STs which get 15 per cent and 7.5 per cent reservation in government jobs and education systems.