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Journalism of Courage
Amid the continuing conflict in Chhattisgarh between the Bhupesh Baghel-led government and Governor Anusuiya Uikey over the reservation amendment Bills, veteran Congress tribal leader and former Union minister Arvind Netam has slammed both the ruling Congress and the principal Opposition BJP for “doing politics over the quota issue”.
Speaking to The Indian Express, Netam, 80, said both the Congress and the BJP during their tenures at the helm have passed quota amendment legislations by breaching the Supreme Court-stipulated 50 per cent limit “knowing that it would be struck down by the courts for being unconstitutional”.
Netam, who now leads a faction of the tribal body Chhattisgarh Sarva Adivasi Samaj, castigated both the parties for not passing a separate quota legislation for the Scheduled Castes (SCs) and the Scheduled Tribes (STs). He said once this is done, his tribal organisation will support the government on “any amount of reservation it would give to Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and the Economically Weaker Section (EWS) through another legislation”.
The latest row between CM Baghel and Governor Uikey has been raging over the two amendment quota Bills – Chhattisgarh Public Service (Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes Reservation) Amendment Bill and Chhattisgarh Educational Institutions (Reservation in admission) Amendment Bill – passed by the state Assembly unanimously on December 2, which provide for a total of 76% reservation in government jobs and educational institutions to various caste categories.
Governor Uikey has not given her assent to these Bills so far, with CM Baghel alleging that she was stalling them at the behest of the BJP.
A former MP who represented the north Bastar constituency five times, Netam said, “Reservation for SCs and STs is guaranteed by the Constitution as per their population. The Chhattisgarh Lok Seva (Reservation for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes) Act 1994 was amended in 2012 to provide 32% reservation for STs, 12% for SCs and 14% for OBCs. But this amended law breached the 50% ceiling due to which the tribals are not getting the proposed 32% quota.”
He also charged: “Politics is being played over reservation. A separate law can be passed for increasing the reservation for OBCs and EWS and we will support any amount of reservation given to them separately.”
Tribals account for 30.62% of Chhattisgarh’s population as per the 2011 Census.
The 2012 amendment legislation, passed during the previous Raman Singh-led BJP government, had reduced the SCs quota by 4% to bring it down to 12 per cent, increased the STs quota by 12% to take it from 20% to 32%, and had kept
the quota for OBCs unchanged at 14%. This amended law was stayed by the Chhattisgarh High Court in 2012 and struck down in September this year, which termed it “unconstitutional” for breaching the 50% mark.
Netam, who hails from the Naxal-affected Bastar region, is a lawyer by training. At the age of 29, he was the youngest minister in the Indira Gandhi government in the 1970s. He was then the deputy minister for education, social welfare and culture. He was the agriculture minister in the Narasimha Rao government in the 1990s.
Netam blamed the BJP government for not passing a separate reservation bill for tribals and Dalits and “making them suffer for a decade by breaching the 50% reservation limit knowing it would be termed unconstitutional”. He also blamed the Congress government for “repeating the same mistake” now.
Both the BJP and the Congress however rejected Netam’s criticism. BJP spokesman Kedar Gupta said, “We want reservation for all communities. The Congress did nothing for four years due to which in September we lost the case in high court.”
The Congress’s media cell chief and spokesperson Sushil Anand Shukla said, “We want reservation for all. The Governor is stalling the Bills. Let the courts decide. Also, when the central government breached the 50% mark to give 10 % quota to EWS and the Supreme Court allowed it what is wrong if we breach the 50% mark? It has also been breached by BJP-ruled Karnataka government.”
Another faction of the Chhattisgarh Sarva Adivasi Samaj has been supporting the Baghel government’s quota Bills. Last Tuesday, about 2,000 Adivasi Samaj activists held a rally near the Raj Bhavan to protest against the Governor’s move not to clear the Bills, which has also sparked a slugfest between the Congress and the BJP.
“It is true that a faction of people from our Samaj, who are also Congress MLAs, are supporting these Bills and went to Raj Bhavan to protest but we do not back their move. These Congress MLAs have never highlighted the plight of the tribal community in the state,” charged Vinod Nagvanshi, state secretary of Netam’s Adivasi Samaj group.
