Jharkhand assembly on November 11 passed a Bill to raise the total reservation offered to different categories to 77 %.
The nod was given in a special session of the assembly and an amendment was passed to the Jharkhand Reservation of Vacancies in Posts and Services Act, 2001, raising the reservations for Scheduled Tribes (ST), Scheduled Castes (SC), Extremely Backward Classes (EBC), Other Backward Classes (OBC), and Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) in government jobs from the present 60%.
The bill proposes that the state will urge the Centre for changes in the Ninth Schedule of the Constitution.
As per the proposed reservation scheme, local people of the SC community will get a quota of 12 %, STs will get 28 %, EBCs 15 %, OBCs 12%, and EWS barring those from the other reserved categories 10%.
Currently, the STs get a 26 % reservation in Jharkhand, while SCs get 10 %, and the OBC gets a share of the 14 % quota in the state.
The second bill, which proposes to use 1932 land records to determine who are the locals, was also passed unanimously. The bill is called the “Jharkhand Definition of Local Persons and for Extending the Consequential, Social, Cultural and Other Benefits to Such Local Persons Bill, 2022.”
As per the bill, the locals will receive certain rights, benefits, and preferential treatment over their land; in their stake in the local development of the rivers, lakes, fisheries; in their local traditional and cultural, and commercial enterprises; in their rights over agricultural indebtedness or availing agricultural loans; in maintenance and protection of their land records; for their social security; and even in case of employment both in private and public sector; and for trade and commerce in the state.
