OBC Information

Kalekar Commission

The First Backward Classes Commission was established by a presidential order on 29 January 1953 under the chairmanship of Kaka Kalelkar and submitted its report on 30 March 1955. It had prepared a list of 2,399 backward castes or communities for the entire country, of which 837 had been classified as the “most backward”. Some of the most notable recommendations of the Kalelkar Commission were:

  1. Undertaking caste-wise enumeration of the population in the census of 1961;
  2. Relating the social backwardness of a class to its low position in the traditional caste hierarchy of Indian society;
  3. Treating all women as a class as “backward”;
  4. Reservation of 70 percent of seats in all technical and professional institutions for qualified students of backward classes.
  5. Reservation of vacancies in all government services and local bodies for other backward classes.

The commission in its final report recommended “caste as the criteria” to determine backwardness. However, the report was not accepted by the government, which feared that the backward classes excluded from the caste and communities selected by the commission might not be considered, and those in most need would be swamped by the multitudes, thus receiving insufficient attention.

Mandal Commission

The decision to set up a second backward classes commission was made official by the president on 1 January 1979. The commission is popularly known as the Mandal Commission, its chairman being B. P. Mandal, submitted a report in December 1980 that stated that the population of OBCs, which includes both Hindus and non-Hindus, was around 52 percent of the total population. The commission prepared a list of 3,743 backward castes or communities for the entire country, of which 1,937 had been classified as the “depressed backward class”.[15][16] It developed 11 indicators or criteria to identify OBCs, of which four were economic.[17]

Twenty-seven percent of reservations were recommended owing to the legal constraint that the total quantum of reservations should not exceed 50 percent. States that have already introduced reservations for OBC exceeding 27 percent will not be affected by this recommendation. With this general recommendation, the commission proposed the following overall scheme of reservation for OBC:

  1. Candidates belonging to OBC recruited based on merit in an open competition should not be adjusted against their reservation quota of 27 percent.
  2. The above reservation should also be made applicable to the promotion quota at all levels.
  3. Reserved quota remaining unfilled should be carried forward for three years and de-reserved thereafter.
  4. Relaxation in the upper age limit for direct recruitment should be extended to the candidates of OBC in the same manner as done in the case of scheduled castes and scheduled tribes.
  5. A roster system for each category of posts should be adopted by the concerned authorities in the same manner as presently done in respect to scheduled caste and scheduled tribe candidates.

These recommendations in total apply to all recruitment to public sector undertakings, both under the central and state governments as well as to nationalised banks. All private sector undertakings that have received financial assistance from the government in one form or another should also be obliged to recruit personnel on the aforesaid basis. All universities and affiliated colleges should also be covered by the above scheme of reservation. Although education is considered an important factor in bringing a desired social change, “educational reform” was not within the terms of reference of this commission. To promote literacy the following measures were suggested:

  1. An intensive time-bound programme for adult education should be launched in selected pockets with a high concentration of the OBC population.
  2. Residential schools should be set up in these areas for backward-class students to provide a climate especially conducive to serious studies. All facilities in these schools including board and lodging should be provided free of cost to attract students from poor and backward class homes.
  3. Separate hostels for OBC students with the above facilities will have to be provided.
  4. Vocational training was considered imperative.

It was recommended that seats should be reserved for OBC students in all scientific, technical and professional institutions run by the central as well as state governments. The quantum of reservation should be the same as in the government services, i.e. 27 percent.