Kerala to update backwards list

The Kerala Cabinet today decided to ask its Planning and Statistics department to do a comprehensive socio-economic survey of backward communities, as a prelude to the decadal updating of the state8217;s backward communities list. The survey will cover all backward communities, including Muslims and Christians, but not Scheduled Castes and Tribes.

The government, incidentally, has ordered the survey months after the Supreme Court refused to take the state government8217;s argument that there were no sections among the state8217;s backward classes who could compete with the forward classes, and there was no creamy layer among them.

The Supreme Court had also set aside in February the controversial report of the Justice K K Narendran Commission, which recommended raising the upper income limit to Rs 3 lakh for excluding the creamy layer from quotas.