Byline: Rema Nagarajan

NEW DELHI: The government may be planning to extend the 27% reservation seats for other backward classes (OBCs) to higher education, but the quota has almost never been filled in the all-India civil services examination in the 12 years since it was first implemented.

Only once in the last 12 batches - the 1997 batch - has it come close to matching the stipulated 27%, when it was 26.7%.

When the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) puts out the number of candidates recommended for selection each year, it gives a consolidated figure for each category - OBCs, SCs and STs and general - which gives the impression that the quota seats have not only been filled, but have exceeded almost every year.

However, in the case of the reserved categories, the consolidated figure includes candidates who may happen to belong to SC, ST or OBC communities, but have made it to the general merit list.

If we exclude those who made it to the general list, the number of OBCs recommended for selection has been consistently below 27%. In fact, apart from 1997 the only batch in which crossed even 25% was 1995, when the quota was effectively 25.3% of the total.

What follows in the process of actually allocating services ends up ensuring that the number of OBCs who finally get jobs in the civil service are considerably less than the number recommended for selection.

Here's how that happens: While a substantial number of OBCs make it to the general list - as many as 49 in 1997 - many end up with ranks that would entitle them only for 'inferior' services.

This creates a somewhat absurd situation where others from their community who have done worse in the exams could get more preferred services by virtue of qualifying as part of the OBC quota.

Hence, even OBC candidates who are part of the general list are given the option of being treated as part of the reserved list for the purpose of service allocation.

While this takes care of their problem, it creates another. They are immediately counted as part of the OBC category. This in turn means that everybody down the line in the OBC list is pushed down till some are left with no service at all.

For instance, an OBC candidate in the general list going by his position in the general list might get only a group B service when his first preference was IAS.

However, an OBC candidate with much lower marks would get IAS being the first in the OBC list. Deeming this as unfair, allotment rules allow him to avail his OBC status to get an IAS post in the reserved category.

Now, if there are 20 such general list OBCs - and there always have been - it would exhaust the entire OBC quota for IAS. Nobody who qualified as part of the original OBC quota would thus get an IAS allotment. And so on down the list of services.

The net result is that while the number of OBCs in the recommended list have been on occasions as high as almost 35%, including those on the general list, by the time the recruitment process is completed, the OBCs constitute barely 27% almost every year.

In effect, therefore, even if many of their community members make it to the general list does not help the OBCs go very much above the 27% barrier.

This practice of counting even those who make it through the general list as part of the quota has become the cause of much ire among OBC aspirants.

The Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) however argues that a general list candidate automatically loses his position in the general list when he avails his caste status to get a better service.

And hence, he gets counted within the reserved quota. This seems contrary to several Supreme Court judgments on the issue.

In the most recent such judgment, in April 2006, the court clearly stated: "While a reserved category recommended by the Commission without resorting to the relaxed standard will have the option of preference, but while computing the quota/percentage of reservation he/she will be deemed to have been allotted seat as an open category candidate (i.e on merit) and not as a reserved category candidate."

Despite such clear observations by the Apex Court, DoPT continues to count such general list OBC candidates in the reserved list.

Asked why it was doing so, a source in the DoPT said the department's interpretation of the SC judgments was that they applied to the allotment rules for the specific year to which the case pertained.

Since those rules have been amended in 2001, the judgment does not apply to subsequent years.