A bill which seeks to give limited powers to the Election Commission to determine change in nomenclature of a parliamentary or assembly seat where a caste has been included or excluded from the SC/ST list in the last one decade was once again introduced in the Rajya Sabha today.
The Readjustment of Representation of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in Parliamentary and Assembly Constituencies (Third) Bill, 2013 was introduced by Law Minister Kapil Sibal.
The Bill seeks to replace an ordinance.
The first ordinance was promulgated in January this year. But the bill to replace the ordinance faced hurdles and was referred to the Standing Committee on Law after members from various parties, including BJP, BSP, SP and CPI-M, objected to rushing through the crucial legislation when it was introduced in Rajya Sabha during the first half of the Budget Session.
Since the ordinance had lapsed, government re-promulgated it but could not get the legislation passed.
The Standing Committee has since supported the bill.
The Bill will empower EC to make changes in Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe constituencies where some castes have been either excluded or included between the 2001 census and May 2012.
As of now, the Commission has to wait for several years for the delimitation exercise to decide whether a constituency should be reserved or kept open for the general category.
The move to bring the ordinance followed the stand taken by EC before the Supreme Court that it does not have the power to alter the SC/ST seats before a delimitation process.
The Commission had made its stand clear before the apex court after the bench asked it to consider the demand of a group of castes from Uttar Pradesh to reserve Assembly seats for STs depending on their population. The plea of the castes came after the state government shifted 10 castes from SC to ST list.
After the 10 castes were added to the ST list, the number of communities rose from 5 to 15, and their population went up to 6.5 lakh from one lakh, which made them demand reserving the constituency for STs.
