Times of India: Chandigarh: Wednesday,
June 22, 2016.
There is no
data available with the state government on the number of scheduled castes (SC)
and backward classes (BC) families in Punjab who have been availing of the
benefits of government job reservation since 1995.
Besides, the
state also has little idea about the number of such families falling in these
three categories in the financial year 2014-15.
In reply to
information sought under the RTI Act, 2005, by Bathinda-based activist Harmilap
Grewal on these two counts, the state welfare department said no such survey
had been conducted in Punjab to collect such data.
"The
department does not have data about the number of families under the
categories, nor does it have a count of the number of families that have
benefited from the reservation policy since 1995. It is this lack of a focused
approach that while certain families have benefited from the reservation quota
for generations, there are lakhs of others who have not availed of the
benefit," said Grewal, in a letter to the Prime Minister, seeking his
intervention into the matter so that a survey is initiated.
As per
Census-2011, Punjab has the highest percentage of Scheduled Caste population
among all states. The Scheduled Caste population in Punjab is 88.60 lakh, which
is 31.94% of the total population (277.43 lakh). Punjab accounts for 2.3% of
the total population and 4.3% Scheduled Caste population of India. However, a
sizeable number of SC families still live below the poverty line.
According to
the survey conducted by the department of rural development and panchayats for
rural areas in the year, 2002 and the state urban development agency (SUDA) in
urban areas in 2004, out of the total 5.23 lakh families living below the
poverty line, 3.21 lakh families belong to the SC which constitutes 61.38% of
the total families below the poverty line in Punjab.
As per
Agricultural Census 2010-11, the number of operational holdings with SCs are
63,480 spreading over an area of 1,26,966 hectares comprising 6.02% and 3.20%
of the total land holdings and area of the state, respectively. The
distribution of SC population among the districts of the state indicates that
the percentage of SC persons is high in Nawanshahr (42.51%).
.JPG)
.JPG)
