In a stinging rejection of Uttar Pradesh (UP) chief minister Mayawati’s marked preference for Dalits over other castes, the Supreme Court has refused to approve a proposal of the state government to exclude poor students of other backward classes (OBC) and general category from the benefits of a scholarship scheme started in 2006 by the then-ruling Samajwadi Party (SP) government. The scheme provided scholarships to students from families with an annual income of less than Rs.1 lakh, even if they were from OBC or general categories. Such students were entitled to free education in the state beyond class X, including access to private professional engineering, medical and busi-ness management institutions.
The fee reimbursement scheme has its roots in the Central government’s post matric scholarship scheme for scheduled caste and scheduled tribe (SC/ST) students, adopted by the UP government in 2004. In August 2006, the Mulayam Singh Yadav-led SP government included poor upper caste students within its ambit while OBC students were included in February 2007. A budget of Rs.148.11 crore was sanctioned for the scheme in 2006-07 and an additional Rs.50 crore approved after the inclusion of OBCs.
All these populist initiatives of the SP government proved fruitless. In the Uttar Pradesh state legislative elections held in May 2007, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) led by Dalit icon, Ms. Mayawati, swept the polls winning a majority in the state assembly. In May 2008, the new chief minister passed two executive orders directing that the free educational facilities granted to poor general and OBC category students beyond class X should be withdrawn, but continued for SC/ST students.
This prompted the Lucknow-based Meritorious Education for Youth Development and Humane Activities (MEYDHA) to file a writ petition in the Allahabad high court challenging the state government’s discriminatory orders. On January 29 the court set aside the executive orders. On September 15, a Supreme Court bench of Justices R.V. Raveendran and B.S. Reddy dismissed the Mayawati government’s appeal against the Allahabad high court’s judgement and asked it to await the detailed report of a committee which the state government had constituted to examine the impact of the impugned executive orders. The scheme covers tuition, games, library, medical examination and other compulsory fees payable (except for refundable deposits) and ranges from Rs.5,000 for BA degrees to Rs.3.42 lakh for medical studies.
The scrapping of the fee scheme had affected almost 1.5 million OBC and general category students in the state. Comments Laxmi Kant Shukla, MEYDHA’s president and a senior officer who filed the writ petition against the Mayawati government’s executive orders: “The orders are arbitrary, caste discriminatory and violate students’ fundamental right to education. How can a self-respecting government discriminate against students on caste lines?”
In the continuous confusion created by caste politics of the most educationally backward BIMARU (Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and UP) states, many greater injustices have been perpetrated.
Vidya Pandit (Lucknow)