Stop Reservations

The Mandal Commission in India was established in 1979 by the Janata Party government under Prime Minister Morarji Desai with a mandate to "identify the socially or educationally backward". It was headed by Indian parliamentarian B.P. Mandal to consider the question of seat reservations and quotas for people to redress caste discrimination, and used eleven social, economic, and educational indicators to determine "backwardness". In 1980, the commssion's report affirmed the affirmative action practice under Indian law whereby members of lower castes (known as Other Backward Classes and Scheduled Castes and Tribes) were given exclusive access to a certain portion of government jobs and slots in public universities, and recommended changes to these quotas, increasing them by 27% to 49.5%. The report, released in 1980, was the source of great controversy, and its implementation in 1990 was the ultimate cause of India's Prime Minister Vishwanath Pratap Singh's resignation.

Why 49.5%?

Under the 1950 Constitution of India, 15% of educational and civil service seats were reserved for "scheduled castes" and 7.5% for "scheduled tribes." The first backward classes commission, headed by Kaka Kalelkar, submitted its report in 1955.

In 1963, the Supreme Court of India ruled that total reservations could not exceed 50%.