New Delhi: As the outrage over the arrests of activists is overflowing across all parts of the country, the Supreme Court released a landmark judgement on reservation in jobs and education on Thursday which could have far-reaching effects on the people of India.
 
SCs/ STs will not lose their caste status in their state of origin and will be entitled to reservation benefits there, but not in the state to which they have migrated to if their caste is not notified there.
 
A person belonging to a Scheduled Caste (SC) or Scheduled Tribe (ST) in a state will not be deemed to be SC or ST in another state to which he/ she migrates for the purpose of employment or education, the Supreme Court clarified on Thursday.
 
The bench with a majority of 4:1 held that as far as Delhi is concerned, the central reservation policy regarding SC/ST would be applicable in the city. It added that “pan-India reservation” would apply in the case of Delhi. This means that in Delhi, for both central services and those under the union territory, reservation will be open to all SCs/ STs from across the country.
 
A five-judge Constitution bench of Justices Ranjan Gogoi, N V Ramana, Mohan M Shantanagoudar, S Abdul Nazeer and R Banumathi unanimously held that “a person who is recognised as a member of Scheduled Castes/ Scheduled Tribes in his original state, will be entitled to all the benefits of reservation under the Constitution in that state only, and not in other states/ union territories and not entitled to the benefits of reservation in the migrated state/ union territory”.
 
“P S Krishnan, former secretary, welfare ministry, said the SC had only reiterated the Constitutional provisions of Articles 341 and 342, which define SCs/STs with respect to any state or union territory. “Someone who is an untouchable in one state may not be so in another. For instance, the dhobi caste is treated as untouchables in North India, so are the Vannan caste of washermen in Kerala, but they are not considered to be SC in the rest of South India,” he said in a report by The Indian Express.
 
On Thursday, the Supreme Court also said that factors like an inadequate representation of scheduled castes and tribes in government jobs, instead of their backwardness, need to be considered while granting quota to them in promotions.
 
“It also observed that the members of SC/ST communities were constitutionally presumed to be backward. The observations came from a five-judge constitution bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra, which reserved its verdict on a clutch of petitions seeking reconsideration by a seven-judge bench its 2006 verdict in the M Nagraj case which had put conditions for granting quota benefits in job promotions to employees belonging to the Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (ST) communities,” the Business Standard report said.
 
The Centre and various state governments have sought reconsideration of this verdict, saying it has virtually made grant of quota in promotions for SC/ST unworkable. They had also assailed it on various grounds, including that the members of the SC/ST communities are presumed to be backward and the stigma of caste still remains with them.
 
“The observation came when senior advocate Rakesh Dwivedi opposed the grant of quota in promotions in higher posts, saying “crutches are not forever and crutches are not for all. Generations (of SC/ST) which were crippled have gone and the generations which crippled them have also gone.”  “The object of reservation being social advancement and empowerment of the SC/ST, in the backdrop of historical exploitation, the State has necessarily to focus on continued existence of backwardness and the wound of historical exploitation,” he said, adding as an SC/ST employee goes up in life, the justification for reservation gets diluted,” it reported.
 
“He said the continued backwardness of a class should be the basis for grant of reservation and a person, who has joined the service, cannot be allowed to “leapfrog and leapfrog” over general category employees, just because his fellow caste men are being exploited somewhere in a village,” the report added.
 
“There should not be quota in promotions for higher services as the presumption of backwardness of SC and ST employees “vanishes” once they join government service, he had claimed. He had also said the quota in promotions for SC/ST may be continued for class-IV and class-III services, but should not be allowed for higher services. Earlier, the top court had questioned the logic behind granting quota in promotions in government jobs to the kith and kin of affluent persons among the SC and ST communities who have been holding high official positions. It had asked why the ‘creamy layer’ principle, used to exclude the affluent among other backward classes (OBCs) from enjoying the fruits of reservation, cannot be made applicable to deny quota benefits in promotion to those affluent among the SCs and STs,” said a report in The New Indian Express.

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The protests were organised in connection with the August 28 raids against on human rights activists, lawyers, journalists, teachers and cultural activists and trade unionists. Pune police conducted raids on the houses of Varavara Rao, poet and renowned activist, Sudha Bharadwaj a well known civil rights activist and lawyer who has been working and organising labourers in Chhattisgarh, Vernon Gonsalves and Arun Ferreira, Mumbai based activists who have repeatedly expressed dissent against the State and Gautam Navlakha, also a civil rights activist and journalist who has extensively written about the Human Rights violations in the State of Jammu and Kashmir. They were arrested for allegedly having ‘Maoist’ links and being connected with the Elgaar Parishad. Right-wing Twitter trolls have been quick to brand them ‘Urban Maoists’.

The arrested have been booked under the draconian Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) and 3 of the 5 arrested are expected to be presented in court today.

Apart from this Father Stan Swamy, who has been organising Adivasis in Khunti, Jharkhand has also had to experience the wrath of the Pune Police who presented him with a warrant written in Marathi. Interestingly, Swamy had nothing to do with the Elgaar Parishad!

It is clear that the State is hell-bent on stifling voices of dissent that threaten their electoral power. This witch-hunt is a clear threat to a Democracy and the Constitutional Principles of Freedom to dissent.

Human rights defenders and activists have expressed their solidarity and concerns over the State’s unprecedented attack on these activists. Protests meetings and conferences have been organised in various parts of the country.
 

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A Brief Background of how Rais Khan has been harassing Setalvad

Khan has, since 2010, thirty two months after he was discontinued from services of field coordinator of CJP, a renumerative post where rental accommodation was also provided, literally been forum shopping and at the root of several malicious and false cases against first Setalvad alone, then both Anand and Setalvad. Setalvad was first targeted in 2004 through wings of the Gujarat state who induced star witness, Zahira Shaikh. A Supreme Court appointed Registrar General report completely exonerated Setalvad and CJP of baseless charges and found Zahira guilty of inducement by influential politicians. She was sentenced to one year simple imprisonment in 2006. Allegations against Setalvad have ranged from kidnapping to perjury now financial embezzlement.

Clearly, today Khan who enjoys the patronage of the regime in Delhi having been appointed to the Central Wakf Board also has senior counsel closely associated with the ruling party appearing for him. Since September 2010 his forum shopping has meant him approaching five trial courts specially hearing the Gujarat 2002 cases, the Nanavaty Shah Commission, the SIT and now the Crime Branch of the Gujarat police. In two judgments, in the Sardarpura matter and the Naroda Patiya matter, the judgments have passed remarks against Khan labelling his conduct as interference in the administration of justice.

Clearly the path-breaking work by CJP, spearheaded by its Secretary, Setalvad that has ensured the conviction of 172 persons — 124 of which to life imprisonment– is the single most significant reason for her being singled out by a vindictive regime. The continued historical legal battle in the form of the Zakia Jafri case too, is a serious thorn in the flesh for the powers that be.

Khan has now, in a new FIR, made a series of baseless allegations suggesting Setalvad and Anand got this funds for their education NGO KHOJ under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, but the funds so obtained were utilised for personal purposes. The complaint also states the fund were used for creating and distributing printed materials that could cause communal disharmony. Khan first tried to get CBI, then MHRD to lodge this complaint. When that did not work, his allies in the crime branch have come to his aid.

So far, Teesta Setalvad, a human rights defenders with three decades of courageous work behind her, has had to seek anticipatory bail in false criminal cases eight times already. Curtailing her personal freedoms and threatened incarceration is clearly the preferred way of this regime. Anand too, has now been falsely implicated three times.
 

Now, CJP would like to set the record straight by presenting a summary of the facts of the case:

In 1994, Setalvad and Anand started a programme for school children which was christened as ‘KHOJ: Education for a Plural India’. As a project of Sabrang Trust, the KHOJ innovative educational modules evolved by them have been successfully implemented in both privately run and civic corporation-run schools in Mumbai and elsewhere in Maharashtra over the years.

Prior permission for a team of KHOJ teachers to run these classes in the Mumbai Municipal Corporation run schools, for example, was granted by the BMC’s Education Officer, year after year. KHOJ has been active since 1994 and has been working on the crucial area of Education Policy related to Democratization of the Social Studies and History Syllabus and Text-books.

Teesta Setalvad’s work in the field of education has been widely recognized and she was appointed to the Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE) Committee (CABE is a board constituted by the Parliament) in 2004 and served on the board till the year 2014. Teesta Setalvad was appointed as a member of the CABE on ‘Regulatory Mechanisms for Textbooks and Parallel Textbooks Taught in Schools outside the Government System’.

The terms of reference (TOR) of the Committee were:

• To study and report on textbooks in government schools not using the CBSE syllabus;
• To study the textbooks and curriculum of schools outside the government system, including those run by religious and social organizations;
• To suggest an appropriate regulatory mechanism for institutionalizing the issue of preparation of textbooks and curricular material.

In the course of their work, Setalvad came to know about the grant by the Ministry of Human Resource Development for Scheme of Assistance under Innovation and Experimental Education Programmes (Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan). On behalf of Sabrang Trust, Setalvad submitted the proposal for grant from the Ministry of Human Resource Development to the then Joint Secretary of the Ministry of Human Resource Development Ms. Anita Bhatnagar on 8th March 2010. The said proposal was in the prescribed form along with the necessary Application Form.

Sabrang Trust sought 100% grant from the Ministry of Human Resource Development for a period of three years i.e. 2009-10, 2010-11 and 2011-12. Through the infusion of the grant in the said project the Trust sought in order to reach out to 6000 students in 75 schools, which would include the 2000 students in 33 schools across Maharashtra where KHOJ classes were already being conducted. The said Application Form also laid down the budgetary details of the Trust’s spending on the said project for the fiscal year 2009-10 and the total estimated expenditure for the fiscal year 2010-11. The total amount of grant requested for the fiscal year 2010-11 stood at Rs. 1,00,55,400/- (Rupees One Crore Fifty Five Thousand Four Hundred only).

After Sabrang’s proposal was examined and scrutinised, the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Department of School Education & Literacy released the first installment of the grant for the first year of the approved project amounting to Rs. 58,72,500/- by a letter dated 03.02.2011. A Joint Evaluation Team (JET) comprising of Ms. Venita Kaul (Member, Grant-in-Aid Committee), Mr. A. K. Tewari (Government of India Representative) and Mr. Nandan Nangare (State of Maharashtra Representative) under-took and evaluation of the project’s progress on 09-10.02.2012. This was favourable and some changes were suggested which were accepted by Sabrang.

Under the said scheme, 16 teachers were employed during the duration of the project. The said project benefited 192 schools through direct teaching and teacher training programmes. 10 Libraries were setup across Maharashtra and most of the books for the libraries were procured from Government publishing houses. An online project was set up, the same is still in existence 7 short films were made and one book was conceptualized and published as curriculum for 5th standard students. Through this curriculum which was a child centric pedagogy India’s constitutional values and pluralism were imparted to around 6000 students across the State of Maharashtra.

In fact, the JET said,
 

Overall, the objectives and efforts under the KHOJ project are undoubtedly laudable since not only do they cater to the need to promote secularism and peace education, which should be a priority, but also since there is hardly any effort otherwise in mainstream schools to address these aspects. How crucial it is to reach out to the children especially of the urban poor from the slum areas comes across very strongly in the anecdotes shared by KHOJ teachers with the JET.”

Over the period of three years the Ministry of Human Resource Development released grants worth Rs. 1,42,23,797/- (inclusive of bank interest) of which the Trust utilized a total of Rs.1,36,31,686/- and the un-used funds which amounted to Rs. 5,91,871/- was duly returned to the Ministry of Human Resource Development in 12.06.2014. The Ministry of Human Resource Development released grants worth Rs. 58,72,500/, Rs. 26,66,570/- and Rs. 54,20,848/- in the fiscal years 2011-12, 2012-13 and 2013-14 respectively and the Applicants furnished relevant utilization certificates.

The entire procedure was above board an in line with the law. CJP therefore requests the media to check their facts before reporting on the case. CJP would also like to warn readers against some outright hateful articles in some publications. We have nothing to hide and all facts have been laid clearly in this statement.
 

Related:

CJP Targeted
Teesta Setalvad targeted yet AGAIN!
 

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