10% seats in educational institutions to be increased to accommodate the reservation for economically weaker section

Today BJP president Amit Shah informed that the government will increase seats in educational institutions by 10%, to ensure that meritorious students do not get harmed by the government’s decision to provide 10% reservation to economically weaker sections.

https://twitter.com/CNNnews18/status/1082608099083448320?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
On 8^th January 2019, the union government tabled a constitution amendment bill to provide 10% reservation in jobs and education to economically backward sections from all communities. This reservation will be in addition to the existing 50% reservation provided for people from Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Castes. The 124^th Constitution amendment bill was cleared by the union cabinet on 7^th December, which seeks to extend to benefit of reservation to those people not covered under existing reservation for SCs, STs and OBCs.

The economical backward has been defined as anyone with an annual income below ₹8 lakhs, apart from clauses on landholding. The ₹8 lakh limit is at per with the existing limit for the creamy layer of OBCs.

It had been feared that due to this additional 10% reservation, which brings the total reservation to 60%, fewer seats and job will be available for meritorious jobs who do not come under any category of reservation. With the announcement by Amit Shah, the worry about education institutions has been taken care of, as the existing level of unreserved seats will be maintained, and the government will create additional seats to accommodate the newly reserved seats.

It may be noted that a large section of media has labelled the bill as upper caste reservation bill, which is the completely wrong interpretation of the bill. Although the bill will benefit economically backward people from the upper caste, it is not limited to upper caste alone. The bill says that it will cover everyone not covered by existing reservation laws. This means not only upper caste, but the bill will also cover people from all other communities and religions, where the concept of caste does not exist.