Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge said that his party was opposed to implementing the creamy layer concept for SCs and STs. He also indicated that it was not in agreement with the idea of sub-classification of the communities.
He has issued his party’s first official reaction in a video message, a week after the Supreme Court’s judgment on the sub-categorisation of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes for reservation in government jobs and educational institutions.
A day after the Union Cabinet made it clear that the government is against the creamy layer concept,Kharge asserted that the basis of reservation was never the economic development of any individual or community for these communities.
“Rather the aim has been to end the untouchability that has been prevalent in our society for thousands of years. And it has not been eliminated from our society. Several examples are coming before us every day,” he said. This is why it is wrong to even talk about creamy layers in SC-ST. The Congress party is opposed to this, he added.
The Congress president recalled that even after 70 years, the majority of the posts reserved for SCs and STs in the government services remain vacant. In what appears to be an indication of the Congress’s disagreement with the idea of quota within quota for SCs and STs, he said,
He lamented that the government avoided discussing the judgment during the just concluded Budget Session of Parliament. “If the government had wanted, it could have in this very session resolved the issue through a Constitutional amendment. The Modi government brings new bills within two to three hours, so this was also possible,” he said.
Referring to the historic background of SC, ST reservations, Kharge recalled that the Scheduled Castes got reservation for the first time as a result of the Poona Pact of 1932 reached between B.R. Ambedkar and Mahatma Gandhi. Only later it got Constitutional recognition and its implementation in jobs and educational institutions was also due to the contributions made by Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, he added.
