Bhubaneswar: In a major development, the Odisha Assembly on Monday unanimously passed the Odisha State Commission for Backward Classes (amendment) Bill 2020.
State SC/ST development and backward classes welfare minister Jagannath Saraka had moved the Bill this afternoon.
The Chief Minister also moved a resolution to empower the backward commission to conduct survey of social and educational conditions of the people belonging to the backward classes even as the Centre will not do it along with the general census-2021.
The resolution was also unanimously passed by the House.
“Formation of Odisha on a linguistic identity served as a model for the states of post independent India. Since then, our state has navigated its path of growth, keeping inclusiveness as its guiding principle. To further accelerate this inclusive growth, it is important to have reliable data about the backward classes of the state,” said the Chief Minister while moving the resolution.
The chief minister also said that his government has no access to any recent data on condition of backward classes as the last caste-based census was done almost 90 years ago in 1931.
“With century-old data in hand, we cannot make an accurate and focused planning to reach out to the backward classes of the society,” he added.
On February 12, the State Government constituted the State Odisha Commission for Backward classes with former judge of Orissa High Court Justice Raghunath Biswal as its Chairperson.
According to reports, people belonging to OBCs comprise 54 per cent of state’s total population.
Ms Kalinga