JAMMU: Sunil Prajapati, President BJP OBC Morcha J&K UT, called on the Hon'ble Minister of States (MoS) for Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution; and Social Justice and Empowerment, B L Verma and apprised him the public issues relating to bifurcation/revision of Ration Cards and certain discriminations/discrepancies in the Reservation to OBCs in J&K UT.
Prajapati in a memorandum submitted to the Hon'ble MoS BL Verma has stated that the People of J&K UT are suffering great difficulities and feel embarrassed due to non bifurcation/revision of Ration Cards for 8-10 years. The Ration cards were last reviewed/bifurcated in J&K some time during 2015-16 as per the Census 2011.
Thereafter, a number of families have been separated from Head of the Families and many children born to the existing families but the Ration Cards have not been reviewed, updated or bifurcated, as such many people are suffering adversely due to non revision of Ration Cards. Prajapati accordingly requested the Honble MOS for favourable action to resolve the issue of revision/bifurcation of Ration Cards so that difficulties of affected people are removed.
Further the, Prajapati also apprised the Hon'ble MoS relating to the issues of Reservation to OBC category which includes the issue of updation of newly added 15 OBC castes in the Centre OBC List as considered by the J&K Govt vide SO 176 of 15 March 2024. Another issue of OBCs, he raised that J&K Govt has not adopted the Centre Creamy Layer policy for issuance of OBC certificate for the UT, but the Rules formed by the Article 370 time Govts for Social Caste (OSC) category are being applied, which are against the spirit of Centre Govt orders for Creamy layer since the income from salaries and Agriculture land is not calculated towards Annual Income, but the J&K UT Govt include income from every source including Salary and Agriculture income. Due to which many eligible people are denied OBC certificates.
The another issue of OBC raised by Sunil Prajapati is that the OBC category in J&K has been provided 8% reservation, while the population of OBCs is above 27%. The large portion of OBC reservation quota has been diverted to RBA and ALC, the area based Reserve Categories created by previous Govts to provide reservation to the people of certain villages as per choice of MPs/MLAs of the ruling parties for vote bank, which is unconstitutional and do not exist anywhere in the Country. As such he requested the MoS that Area based Reservations RBA and ALC in J&K should be abolished so that OBC get its due share of reservation as per population.
