Consider the following statements with regard to the setting up of the Backward Class Commission in India: 1. The First Backward Class Commission, set up by the Government of India, is popularly known as Kaka Kalelkar Commission. 2. The Third Backward Class Commission, set up by the Government of India, is popularly known as Mandal Commission. Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

Correct — A, 1 only. Statement 1 is right. Article 340 lets the President appoint a commission to investigate the conditions of the socially and educationally backward classes, and the first such commission was appointed by presidential order on 29 January 1953 with Kaka Kalelkar as chairman — which is why it is always called the Kalelkar Commission. It reported on 30 March 1955, listing 2,399 backward castes and communities of which 837 were classed as most backward, and the government of the day rejected the report on the ground that the commission had applied no objective test for identifying backwardness. Statement 2 fails on its ordinal. The Mandal Commission was the SECOND Backward Classes Commission, not the third. It was set up on 1 January 1979 by the Janata Party government under Morarji Desai, with B. P. Mandal, a former Chief Minister of Bihar, as chairman, and it reported in December 1980 recommending twenty-seven per cent reservation for other backward classes in central government services and public undertakings. Those recommendations lay unimplemented until V. P. Singh announced them in August 1990, and the Supreme Court upheld the reservation in Indra Sawhney in 1992 while excluding the creamy layer and capping total reservation at fifty per cent. Only two commissions have ever been appointed under Article 340, so the statement describes a body that does not exist.

• (b)2 only — Rejects the true statement and keeps the false one. Kalelkar chaired the First Backward Classes Commission, and Mandal chaired the Second, not the Third.
• (c)Both 1 and 2 — The trap this item is built on — statement 2 reads correctly at speed because the Mandal Commission really is a Backward Classes Commission and really is named after its chairman. Only the ordinal is wrong, and only two such commissions exist.
• (d)Neither 1 nor 2 — Throws out statement 1, which is accurate in every particular — the First Backward Classes Commission of 1953 is the Kalelkar Commission.

Article 340 of the Constitution empowers the President to appoint a commission to investigate the conditions of socially and educationally backward classes and to recommend steps for their advancement. Two commissions have been appointed under it. The first, under Kaka Kalelkar, was appointed in 1953 and reported in 1955; its report was set aside as lacking objective criteria. The second, under B. P. Mandal, was set up in 1979 and reported in 1980; its central recommendation of twenty-seven per cent reservation in central services was implemented in 1990 and survived challenge in the Supreme Court in 1992. A permanent body followed: the National Commission for Backward Classes, statutory from 1993 and given constitutional standing under Article 338B by the 102nd Amendment in 2018.

Statements items in polity are frequently decided by a single word, and here the word is an ordinal. Read numbers in a statement as claims to be checked, not as furniture. A quick test is to ask how many bodies of the kind exist at all: if only two commissions have been appointed under Article 340, no statement about a third can stand. It also helps to hold the two commissions as a pair with contrasting fates — Kalelkar reported and was rejected, Mandal reported and was shelved for a decade before being implemented and litigated. Note the vocabulary shift that follows: after Indra Sawhney the work of identifying backward classes moved from ad hoc commissions to a standing body, first the statutory National Commission for Backward Classes of 1993 and then the constitutional commission under Article 338B from 2018. That is also where the numbering questions now come from, so keep 338 for Scheduled Castes, 338A for Scheduled Tribes and 338B for backward classes.

• Article 340 empowers the President to appoint a commission to investigate the conditions of socially and educationally backward classes.
• The First Backward Classes Commission was appointed by presidential order on 29 January 1953 under Kaka Kalelkar and reported on 30 March 1955.
• The Kalelkar report identified 2,399 backward castes and communities, 837 of them most backward, and was rejected for want of objective criteria.
• The Second Backward Classes Commission — the Mandal Commission — was set up in 1979 by the Janata Party government under Morarji Desai, with B. P. Mandal as chairman, and reported in December 1980.
• It recommended twenty-seven per cent reservation for other backward classes in central government services; this was announced in August 1990 and upheld in Indra Sawhney (1992), subject to the creamy-layer exclusion and the fifty per cent ceiling.
• The National Commission for Backward Classes was set up on 14 August 1993 under an Act of 1993 and became a constitutional body under Article 338B on 11 August 2018, through the 102nd Amendment.

• Calling the Mandal Commission the Third Backward Classes Commission; it is the Second, and there is no Third.
• Attributing the Mandal Commission to the government that implemented its report; it was set up in 1979 and implemented only in 1990.
• Mixing up Articles 338, 338A and 338B, which cover Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and backward classes respectively.

As a two-statement item turning on an ordinal or a name, as a direct question on who chaired which commission, or through the Mandal recommendations and the Indra Sawhney conditions.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Under which Article of the Constitution of India may the President appoint a commission to investigate the conditions of socially and educationally backward classes?

  • (a)Article 338
  • (b)Article 340
  • (c)Article 341
  • (d)Article 342

  Answer(b) Article 340 — Articles 341 and 342 deal with the lists of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, and Article 338 with the National Commission for Scheduled Castes.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The National Commission for Backward Classes was given constitutional status by which Constitutional Amendment?

  • (a)The 89th Amendment
  • (b)The 93rd Amendment
  • (c)The 102nd Amendment
  • (d)The 103rd Amendment

  Answer(c) The 102nd Amendment — it inserted Article 338B in 2018; before that the Commission was statutory, set up under an Act of 1993.