About the Mandal commission UPSC.

Question

Asked: March 20, 20212021-03-20T01:52:10+05:30 2021-03-20T01:52:10+05:30In: UPSC PRELIMS

Describe Mandal Commission.

Rajnish · Accepted Answer · 2021-03-20T02:01:23+05:30

In 1990, the then Union government announced that Other Backward Classes (OBCs) would get 27% reservation in jobs in central government services and public sector units (under Article 16(4)).
The decision was based on Mandal Commission Report (1980), which was set up in 1979 and chaired by B.P. Mandal. The mandate of the Mandal Commission was to identify socially or educationally backward classes to address caste discrimination.
The recommendation for OBC reservations in central government institutions was implemented in 1992 while the education quota came into force in 2006 (under Article 15(4) of the Constitution).
To ensure that benefits of the recommendations of the Mandal Commission percolated down to the most backward communities, the creamy layer criteria was invoked by Supreme Court in the ruling called the ‘Indira Sawhney Judgment’ (1992).
A household with an annual income of Rs 8 lakh or above is classified as belonging to the ‘creamy layer’ among OBCs and hence is not eligible for reservations.

The First Backward Class Commission report of 1955 had proposed the sub-categorization of OBCs into backward and extremely backward communities.
In the Mandal Commission report of 1979, a dissent note by member L R Naik proposed subcategorization in intermediate and depressed backward classes.
In 2015, the NCBC had proposed that OBCs be divided into the following three categories:
- Extremely Backward Classes (EBC-Group A) facing social, educational and economic backwardness even within the OBCs, consisting of aboriginal tribes, nomadic and semi-nomadic tribes who have been carrying on with their traditional occupations.
- More Backward Classes (MBC-Group B) consisting of vocational groups carrying on with their traditional occupations; and
- Backward Classes (BC-Group C) comprising of those comparatively more forward.
According to the NCBC, 11 states (Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Puducherry, Karnataka, Haryana, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Bihar, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, and Tamil Nadu) have subcategorized OBC for reservations in state-government-owned institutions.