The West Bengal government has decided to reserve 17 per cent seats in all government and government-aided colleges for students belonging to the other backward classes (OBCs), with effect from the coming academic session. This was announced in the Assembly by Higher Education Minister Sudarshan Roy Chowdhury on Thursday. “The question of reservation of seats in higher education to expand opportunities to OBCs has been under the consideration of the State government...

The Department of Personnel and Training has made it clear that at present there is no proposal to introduce in Parliament a new Bill, viz SC/ST (Reservation in Posts and Services), though the earlier Bill introduced in the Rajya Sabha in 2008 was later withdrawn. The DoPT stated this in reply to a query raised by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Vichar Manch general secretary R.L. Kain whether the government would come out...

Often called Chanakya for his political astuteness, Engineer-politician Nitish Kumar blended his secularist ideology with pragmatic politics and combined the development plank with innovative social engineeering equations in Bihar to bask in glory yet again. Doing an encore after today's landslide victory, the 59-year-old chief minister with his trademark kurta pyjama and grey stubble has become RJD strongman Lalu Prasad's nemesis single handedly contributing to the electoral meltdown of RJD-led Secular...

The number of seats for them in ZPs will go down following amendment to Act A recent Ordinance of the State Government amends the Karnataka Panchayat Raj Act and caps the reservation to various deprived communities at 50 per cent. This means that half the seats are available to general merit candidates. This, according to the Ordinance, will be achieved by keeping the reservation for SC/STs intact and reducing the number...

It is about capitalism and hierarchy The government has now reached a final conclusion on the raging controversy over the caste-based census in the country. In order to reconcile with the contending positions, the government has decided to conduct a separate stand-alone exercise of a parallel house-to-house enumeration of the caste affiliations of households. It is not yet clear as to whether the results and the data of the census proper...