'Consensus on removing 'creamy layer' from ambit of reservation'

Lucknow, June 16 (UNI) The newly-set up National Religious and Linguistic Minorities Commission today said a consensus has emerged to remove 'creamy layer' from the ambit of reservation.

NRLMC member secretary Asha Das said here representatives of 26 states -- that the commission visited -- maintained social and economic factors should be the criterion of providing reservation or benefits to classes, which would emerge as beneficiaries after it filed its report before the union government in October.

''Although we are yet to form a fixed opinion on the meetings and feedbacks we have received, a consensus has emerged that religion or language cannot be the base of backwardness...a review of existing norms and laws has also been mooted,'' she informed.

Ms Das said the interactions showed that people were against extending facilities available to backward classes. ''People have lamented that the benefits fail to trickle down to the poor.'' The Commission, headed by Justice Rangnath Mishra, has been given four terms of references by the Centre before it files its final report in October, 2006.

The commssion has been asked to fix criterion to identify classes, which are backward in terms of language, religion and social and economic structure, elaborate on ways and means for the welfare of their development, the administrative and legal ways to empower them, and make recommendations as to whether to include people of SCs, who had converted to Christianity and Islam. A writ in this regard is pending in the Supreme Court.

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