COUNTERVIEW:
Ahmedabad: Friday, 08 January 2016.
In a step,
which is likely to raise eye-brows of India’s top right to information (RTI)
activists, the Gujarat government has refused to part with any information
regarding official review of the state’s reservation policy towards Dalits,
Adivasis and Other Backward Classes (OBCs) between 2001 and 2015.
In their RTI
replies, officials of the Gujarat government have said that state departments
do not have “any record” on review of the reservation policy, nor have any
committees been set up at the chief ministerial or ministerial level regarding
this.
Senior Dalit
rights activist Kirit Rathod, in an RTI plea, had sought “agenda and minutes of
the meetings, which may have taken place for reviewing the quota policy under
the chairmanship of the chief minister at district, departmental, ministerial,
or chief ministerial level."
Addressed to
the general administration department (GAD) of the Gujarat government,
responsible for personnel issues, Rathod’s application was transferred to two
separate departments for a reply social justice and empowerment and tribal
development.
Giving
details of the reply he received from the two departments, Rathod, who is
associated with top Gujarat Dalit rights NGO, Navsarjan Trust, Ahmedabad, says,
the public information officer (PIO) of the tribal development department,
Narendra Vaghela, in a “shocking” reply told him that since reservation is a
“policy issue, it does not deal with it.”
As for the
social justice and empowerment department, Rathod received two separate replies.
One of them, by PIO JV Desai, was on Gujarat OBCs, which said that the
department “does not have any records of the review of the reservation policy
under the chairmanship of the chief minister.”
It further
said, “The department has not constituted any committee for the review of the
reservation policy at the district, departmental, ministerial or chief
ministerial level.”
In a separate
reply on Gujarat Dalits, PIO Jagdish Khadiya said, “Since the issues involved
regarding reservation policy Dalits is not on agenda, it is not possible to
provide any information.”
Rathod
wonders whether the replies suggest the Gujarat government has not been serious
in reviewing the implementation of the reservation policy at the highest level.
“It exposes government claims that it is remains committed to reservation”, he
says in a communiqué.
The Navsarjan
Trust activist had demanded information about the reviews that may have taken
place under the reservation policy against the backdrop of demand for quota
within the OBC framework by upper caste Patel agitators.
The Patel
agitation, which began in mid-2015, spread to all parts of Gujarat, is said to
be the main reason why the ruling BJP lost district and taluka panchayat
elections, held in November-end and early December, at the hand of the
opposition Congress.
Rathod asks,
“Does one conclude that neither under the chief ministership of Narendra Modi,
who calls himself OBC, nor under Anandiben Patel, the present chief minister,
no committees have been made or reviews taken place regarding the reservation
policy either at their level or at the ministerial level?”
Rathod says,
the reply is particularly surprising, as the state government had reportedly
set up a committee under the chairmanship of senior minister Nitin Patel to
look into the quota demand of the Patel agitators.
“It is
difficult to understand why state officials are refusing to part any details of
its meetings”, he says.
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