Odisha's SEBC reservation begins with 11.25% quota in higher education, stops short of professional fields

The Mohan Majhi government recently approved an 11.25% reservation in admissions for students from Socially and Economically Backward Classes (SEBC) in State-owned and State-funded higher education institutions — a move seen both as the Bharatiya Janata Party's bid to champion the OBC cause and attempt to address the long-standing aspirations of Odisha’s largest demographic segment.For the first time, students belonging to the SEBC will benefit from a form of reservation in education. Both activists and political leaders have described the 11.25% reservation as a low-hanging fruit for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government to seize. They argued that the successive governments had long lacked the political will to correct the historical injustice and grant SEBCs the reservation they deserved.

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OBC quota in employmentThe OBC reservation has witnessed a chequered implementation in the State. Odisha implemented a 27% reservation for OBC/SEBC in jobs in 1994 and this continued until 2007, when the Odisha High Court dismissed a writ petition, upholding the Odisha Tribunal's 1998 judgment that nullified the provision in the absence of quantifiable data on OBC population. The tribunal had referred to the 1992-landmark decision in Indira Sahwney case by a nine-judge bench of the Supreme Court that laid down the rule that Scheduled Tribe, Scheduled Caste and OBC reservation cannot exceed the 50% threshold in employment.