The government has no records of office expenditure incurred for the Justice G. Rohini Commission for the sub-categorisation of Other Backward Classes (OBCs) since September 2021, according to replies to Right to Information requests filed by The Hindu.
The Commission was formed in 2017 to sub-categorise the nearly 3,000 OBC caste groups and recommend a quota break-up among them. It was initially given 12 weeks to submit a report in this regard but has so far received 14 extensions - the latest one in January this year.
The panel is headed by former Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court, Justice G. Rohini (retd.) and consists of Dr. J.K. Bajaj of the Centre for Policy Studies as a Member. In addition to this, a Director of the Anthropological Survey of India and the Registrar General of India are ex-officio members while a Joint Secretary of the Social Justice Ministry is the Secretary of the Commission.
Expenditure records accessed under the Right to Information Act, 2005 showed that ₹3,75,53,250 was spent on salaries and allowances for the Chairperson and Member and ₹26,04,775 was spent on salaries for consultants from October 2017 to April 2023.
While the government said it spent ₹7,20,000 on “office expenditure and others” for the panel between October 2017 and August 2021, it said that it has no records of office expenditure after that period.
The expenditure for the Commission was being taken care of by the National Commission for Backward Classes from October 2017 to August 2021. Following this, the expenditure for the Commission started coming directly from the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment (MoSJE).
In response to specific queries about office expenditure incurred by the Commission after August 2021, the MoSJE said in the RTI reply, “The information may be treated as nil”, adding this was because it was not maintained with the concerned information officer.
Questions sent to the MoSJE regarding further details of expenditure incurred on the Commission’s working have not yet elicited a response.
Weeks before the Commission had been given its latest extension in the beginning of 2023, The Hindu had reported that the panel had completed the work it was assigned to do, with sources saying it was just working on “finalising” the report and “adding annexures”.
Soon after, the MSJE had told Parliament in reply to a question, that the delay in the Commission’s working was because it was finalising “disambiguation” which was taking time. The government said that part of the panel’s task was to examine the Central OBC list of nearly 3,000 caste groups and recommend corrections, repetitions, ambiguities, and inconsistencies or errors in spellings and that was consuming time.
Before this, the government had attributed the delay to the COVID-19 pandemic. The current deadline for the Commission to submit its report is set at July 31.
As part of its work, the Commission had found that a small group of dominant OBC caste groups were routinely crowding out a large number of communities within the OBC grouping from benefits like reservation, according to sources aware of the panel’s working.
As a result, the Commission had decided to sub-categorise OBC caste groups into four broad groups - with the most percentage of reservation going to the groups that have historically been crowded out and the least going to the groups that have historically been able to avail benefits.
