Following the Supreme Court of India in its judgment dated 16.11.1992 in a Writ Petition (Civil) No. 930 of 1990 ‘ Indira Sawhney Others vs. Union of India and Others. ‘, the Government of India, State Governments and UT administrations constituted a body such as Commission or Tribunal for purposes of entertaining, examining and recommending upon requests for inclusion and complaints of over inclusion and under-inclusion in the list of OBCs. As the Act (1993) was passed and subsequently.
Article 340 provided the following:
- The President may by order appoint a Commission consisting of such persons as he thinks fit to investigate the conditions of the socially and educationally backward classes within the territory of India and the difficulties under which they labour and to make recommendations as to the steps that should be taken by the Union or any State to remove such difficulties to improve their conditions and as to the grants that should be made for the purpose by the Union or any state and the conditions subject to which such grants should be made, and the order appointing such commission shall define the procedure to be followed by the Commission.
- A Commission so appointed shall investigate the matters referred to them and present to the President a report setting out the facts as found by them and make such recommendations as they think proper.
- The President shall cause a copy of the report so presented together with a memorandum explaining the action taken thereon to be laid before each house of Parliament. At present, there is a Chairman of the National Commission for Backward Classes (NCBC), one member-secretary and three other members (2009). The commission is a constitutional body. Under Section 9(1) of the National Commission for Backward Classes Act, 1993, the Commission shall examine requests for inclusion of any class of citizens as a Backward class in the Central List of Backward Classes and hear complaints of over-inclusion or under-inclusion of any Backward Class in the lists and tender such advice to the Central Government as it deems appropriate. Under Section 9(2) of the Act, ‘Theadvice of the Commission shall ordinarily be binding upon the Central Government.’ Under Section 11(1) of the Act, the Central Government may at any time, and shall, at the expiration of ten years from the coming into force of this Act and every succeeding period of ten years thereafter, undertake revision of the lists with a view to excluding from such lists those classes which have ceased to be backward classes or for including in such lists new backward classes.
Under Section 11(2) of the Act, the Central Government shall, while undertaking any revision referred to in sub-section (1), consult the Commission. Thetwo major functions of the NCBC are :
(a) to consider the request for the inclusion of any class of citizens as a backward class in the central list’this function makes the NCBC as a Commission to work on a permanent basis;
(b) to act as a complaint authority’this function makes the Commission an important statutory body to go into the details of every incoming request, determining the claims of the particular class of the people so to be included or excluded in the list of backward classes.
The recommendations of the NCBC are binding on the government though the government finally either accepts or even rejects the recommendations of the Commission. Both the Union and the state governments provide support to the OBCs. The National Backward Classes Finance and Development Corporation (established in 1992) provides finance to Backward Classes for economically and financially weak sections of society. New Swarnima and Mahila Samridhi Yojna are working for women belonging to OBCs and living below poverty line. During 2008-09, beneficiaries numbering 1,22.273 were paid a loan of 151.02 Crore of Rupees, while during 2009’2010, around 78967 persons belonging to the OBC, got 100.02 cores of loan.
