Karnataka Cabinet recommends internal reservation among SCs, asks Centre for constitutional amendment

BENGALURU: The Karnataka Cabinet on Thursday decided to recommend internal reservation among the Scheduled Caste (SC) community to the Central government, based on the Justice AJ Sadashiva Commission report on reservation, as the Congress party had promised before the assembly polls last May.

Addressing the media after the meeting, Law minister HK Patil and social welfare minister HC Mahadevappa said the Cabinet had decided to recommend to the Center to constitutionally empower the states to revise the reservation according to the new census and to amend Article 341 of the Constitution for internal reservation. The move is likely to boost the Congress party’s chances in the Lok Sabha polls due in a few months.

Under Article 341(1) of the constitution, the list of scheduled castes eligible for reservation is to be prepared by the state and then notified by the President. However, adding or removing a caste or group from the list can only be done by the Parliament through a law.


The Sadashiva Commission report had come out during the BJP regime. The then-government had formed a sub committee and had sent a recommendation of allotting a 6% internal quota for SC (Left), 5.5% for SC (Right), 4.5% for touchables (Banjara, Bhovi, Korcha, Kuruma etc) and 1% for others, around two months before the assembly polls. The commission had, however, recommended that the touchable communities be left out of the ambit of the SC reservation.

Members of the touchable community had still felt it was far too less and several protestors from the Banjara community had pelted stones at former CM and BJP veteran Yediyurappa’s home in a sudden flare-up in his constituency Shikaripur back in March last year. The BJP’s recommendations had been made without any statistical assessment, said Mahadevappa.