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Will retain Rs 8 lakh income norm for EWS quota: Centre to SC

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New Delhi, January 2

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The Centre has told the Supreme Court that it has decided to accept the recommendation of a three-member panel to retain the current gross annual family income limit of Rs 8 lakh or less for defining the economically weaker section (EWS).

What panel said…

  • A threshold of Rs 8 lakh annual family income seems reasonable
  • EWS may, however exclude, irrespective of income, a person whose family has 5 acres of agricultural land or more
  • Revisiting criterion delayed the NEET-PG 2021 counselling, leading to protests

The government said the panel had recommended that the family income was a “feasible criterion” for defining EWS and, in the current situation, a threshold of Rs 8 lakh of annual family income seemed reasonable.

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In its affidavit filed in a matter related to admissions for NEET-PG, the Centre said the panel had recommended that “only those families whose annual income is up to Rs 8 lakh would be eligible to get the benefit of EWS reservation”.

“I respectfully submit that the Central government has decided to accept the recommendations of the committee, including the recommendation of applying the new criterion prospectively,” Secretary, Department of Social Justice and Empowerment, R Subrahmanyam, who filed the affidavit on behalf of the Centre, told the top court.

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The Centre had set up the three-member panel, comprising Ajay Bhushan Pandey, former Finance Secretary, VK Malhotra, Member Secretary, ICSSR, and Sanjeev Sanyal, Principal Economic Adviser to Centre, on November 30 last year after an assurance given to the top court to revisit the criteria for determining the EWS. The committee in its report submitted on December 31 last year to the Centre said, “The current gross annual family income limit for EWS of Rs 8 lakh or less may be retained. In other words, only those families whose annual income is up to Rs 8 lakh would be eligible to get the benefit of EWS reservation.”

The process to revisit the criterion delayed the NEET-PG 2021 counselling, which led to wide-scale protests by a large number of doctors in Delhi and other parts of the country. They were seeking expeditious removal of the legal impediments.

The protesting doctors had pointed out that due to a delay of eight months in counselling of the NEET-PG 2021 batch, there was an “acute shortage” of resident doctors across the country.

Meanwhile, the three-member panel in its report said, “The current limit of annual family income of Rs 8 lakhs does not seem to be over-inclusive. It should be noted that the income includes salary and that from agriculture as well.”

The panel recommended: “EWS may, however exclude, irrespective of income, a person whose family has five acres or more of agricultural land.”

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