Incidentally, Article 341 provides reservation for Hindu, Sikh and Buddhist Scheduled Castes but equivalent castes among Muslims and Christians have been left out. A PIL is pending before the Supreme Court on the question of granting the same benefit of reservation to SC/ST converts to Christianity and Islam.

• So which are the OBCs?

In order to identify OBCs, the government first set up the Backward Classes Commission under the chairmanship of Kaka Kalelkar in January 1953. In its report, submitted in March 1955, the Commission prepared a list of 2,399 backward castes or communities for the entire country, of which 837 was classified as ‘‘most backward’’. Interestingly, the Commission also treated all women in the country as ‘‘backward’’.

• How did the Mandal Commission come into being?

In January 1978 it was decided to set up a second backward classes commission, under the chairpersonship of B.P. Mandal. The Mandal Commission submitted its report in December 1980.

The Commission had four terms of reference, including determining the criteria for defining the socially and educationally backward classes, and recommending steps to be taken for their advancement. Eleven criteria were evolved to identify OBCs, under the three heads of ‘social’, ‘educational’ and ‘economic’.

• What were the Mandal Commission’s findings?

Using the 11 criteria, the Commission identified 3,743 caste groups as OBCs. Since population figures along caste lines were not available beyond 1931, the Commission used the 1931 census data to calculate the number of OBCs. The population of Hindu and non-Hindu OBCs worked out to about 52 per cent of the total population. The Commission could not, however, recommend 52 per cent reservations because of the legal constraint that the total quantum of reservations should not exceed 50 per cent. Since the already existing reservations for SC/ST was in tune with their proportion to total population — ie, 15 per cent for SCs and 7.2 per cent for STs (22.5 per cent taken together), OBCs were given a reservation of 27 per cent.

... contd.