EBC Commission may favour 10 to 20 pc reservations

Panaji, Feb 29 (UNI) The National Commission for Economically Backward Classes claims majority of the people were favouring 10 to 20 per cent reservations for the EBC classes.

talking to newspersons here today after concluding its 3-day visit to Goa, the Commission chairman Maj Gen S R Sinho said he was likely to submit its recommendations to the Centre by the next year.

The Commission, which had already visited Haryana, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Maharashtra, would visit some other states to elicit opinion of various sections of society, besides the bureaucrats and the politicians, on the criteria to be adopted for deciding the EBC.

Most of the people were of the opinion that the EBC should have income levels above the BPL but below the creamy layers. The Supreme Court had fixed Rs 2.5 lakh income for the creamy layers.

One of the efforts of the Commission was to look into the ''constiotutional, legal and administrative modalities coming in the way of reservation over and above 50 per cent of existing reservation and suggest modalities to overcome this problem,'' Mr Sinho said.

Member secretary Mahendra Singh and member Narendra Kumar said that the Goa had a peculiarity in that it had recruited only one third of the 15 lakh eligible people under the job reservation category. The rest could be filled by the EBCs and others.

It had another peculiarity in that the migrants who settled in Goa after 1968 cut off date were not given the benefit of existing reservations in jobs and eductional institutions, they added.

They were keen that the status of the EBC's could be improved through various other measures like providing them with better education and health facilities and alternative employment opportunities, both in rural and urban areas, through various schemes.

The Commission members had interacted with the general public besides bureaucrats before going back to New Delhi today.

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