UP to ask Centre to pass a law to include 17 OBC sub-castes in SC list

While quashing the two government notifications – one brought by the Samajwadi Party government in 2016 and the other by the BJP government in 2019 – the High Court had said that only Parliament has the power to add new castes to the Scheduled Castes list.

The High Court said that provisions of Article 341 of the Constitution “do not leave any scope for including any Caste or Group to the list of Scheduled Caste in a State provided by the Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order, 1950, except by law made by Parliament”.

According to Article 341 of the Constitution, any change to the list of Scheduled Castes specified in the President’s order can only be made by Parliament by law.

“We are preparing a draft proposal which will be sent to the Centre, requesting it to include the 17 sub-castes in the Scheduled Castes list. We are working on the proposal, which after due approval will be sent to the Centre seeking an amendment to the list of Scheduled Castes,” UP Minister for Social Welfare Asim Arun told The Indian Express.

Arun on Tuesday met Minister of Fisheries and NISHAD party chief Sanjay Nishad and discussed the proposal, which the government plans to send to the Centre.

After the High Court’s decision, Nishad and his BJP colleague in the state Cabinet, Rakesh Sachan, met Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath seeking inclusion of the 17 OBC sub-castes in the SC list.

The 17 OBC sub-castes that were added to the SC list are Kahar, Kashyap, Kevat, Mallah, Nishad, Kumhar, Prajapati, Dheevar, Bind, Bhar, Rajbhar, Dhimar, Batham, Turha, Godia, Manjhi and Machhua.

According to an estimate by the UP Backward Classes Welfare Department, these sub-castes make up around 15 per cent of the state’s population.

These sub-castes are socially most backward, and many depend on small occupations in rural areas. For instance, Nishads earn from fishing while Kumhars depend on making earthen pots.

A group on the SC list gets more government benefits than the communities on the OBC list. Also, since the OBC population is larger, there is more competition among OBC groups for reservation benefits and the 17 sub-castes would have benefitted from being moved to the SC list.

While the Akhilesh Yadav-led government issued the first order on December 22, 2016, the second was issued by the Yogi Adityanath-led BJP government on June 24, 2019. But none of these governments issued SC caste certificates to these groups.

Earlier, the Mulayam Singh Yadav-led SP government and Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) administration had also attempted to include the 17 OBC communities in the SC list.

During her tenure from 2007 to 2012, Mayawati sent a letter to the Congress government at the Centre to include the 17 groups in the SC list constitutionally and also proportionally increase the SC quota so that the 17 communities receive the benefit of reservation and the existing SC groups do not lose out because of the change.