According to the 2001 Census, there are 23 lakh people belonging to the SC category in Delhi, of whom Jatavs number 8.9 lakh and Valmikis 5 lakh (22 per cent). Valmikis constitute 11.2 per cent and 19.2 per cent of the SC populations of Punjab and Haryana, respectively. In Uttar Pradesh, they are placed fifth in the SC list, the Jatavs being the dominant lot accounting for 56 per cent of the SC population. The Valmiki intellectuals contest this enumeration, but not on well-established empirical grounds.

A conference of about 50-60 Valmiki intellectuals was held at Gandhi Peace Foundation in New Delhi on January 12. Among those who attended were O P Shukla, Judicial Member, Income-Tax Appellate Tribunal; Vijay Prakash, advocate, Delhi High Court; Jyoti Atwal, Assistant Professor of History at JNU; and Vijay Kayat, Reader, MD University, Rohtak. This conference followed a similar ones held by Uttaranchal Valmiki Krantikari Morcha headed by Bhagwat Prasad Makwana on December 23, 2007 at Dehradun and at Agra on January 5 this year.

Shukla said, “In the past 60 years, a few developed castes among SCs have walked away with all the benefits of reservations. The Jatavs in north India, the Mahars in Maharashtra, Malas in Andhra, Pasis and Dusadhs in Bihar have reaped all the benefits of the SC quota. Castes like the Valmikis, Dhanaks, Khatiks and Baazigars have had none of these benefits. Valmiki Class-I officers in Delhi can be counted on fingers, and only three Valmikis in the whole country have till now reached the rank of Additional Secretary. The benefits of quota need to be equitably distributed among different castes by bifurcating the SC category.”

He concluded his address by saying that those families who had benefited from the SC quota should be excluded from reservation. “Even the Supreme Court had recently observed that there should be creamy layer exclusion among SCs,” he said.

Prakash said some states had made efforts to bifurcate the SC quota. “In 1975, Zail Singh had bifurcated the SC category in Punjab into A and B categories, the Valmikis came in the former and the Jatavs in the latter. In 1994, Bhajan Lal also created A and B categories in Haryana. Rajnath Singh did the same in UP, but the initiative was lost as an advocate filed a case against this quota. In Andhra Pradesh, Chandrababu Naidu bifurcated the SC category into A, B, C and D categories. This was challenged in the Andhra High Court, which upheld Chandrababu’s step. One E V Chinnaiah then filed a petition in the Supreme Court in 2004, arguing that there was no constitutional basis for a state providing a separate quota within the SC quota. The apex court struck down the Andhra High Court judgment providing quota within the SC quota as unconstitutional. On the basis of this judgment of the apex court, a petition was filed by Brajesh Singh Muwal, a Jatav, against the SC quota bifurcation in the Punjab and Haryana High Court too, resulting in these categories being abolished,” he said.

Quoting figures, Kayat told The Indian Express that while Jatavs in Haryana occupied about 90 per cent of the Class I and Class II posts in the state before 1994, the distribution of these posts between the “dominant” Jatavs and Ati Dalit castes like Valmikis became almost 50-50 when the A and B categories existed between 1994 and 2006. “This shows how important it is to bifurcate the SC category,” he said.