10% quota for poor in general category: Rao failed, will Modi succeed?

Govt will have to amend the Constitution to bypass SC order

All previous attempts at carving out a quota in jobs and education for the economically backward in the ‘general’ category, including the Hindu upper castes, have failed to pass legal muster. The most famous case was when the P V Narasimha (pictured right) Rao government proposed a 10 per cent reservation for such sections in September 1991.

In its Mandal judgment in 1992, the Supreme Court upheld the V P Singh government’s order — based on the recommendations of the Bindheshwari Prasad Mandal-headed commission — of 1990 to provide 27 per cent reservation for Other Backward Classes (OBCs) on social