How many non-official members can be there under the Madhya Pradesh State Backward Class Commission (Amendment) Act, 2021?

Question

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — C, Five. The Madhya Pradesh State Backward Class Commission (Amendment) Act, 2021 fixes the number of non-official members of the Commission at five.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) Too few — the 2021 amendment fixes the non-official strength at five, not three.  (b) Understates the amended composition — four is not the figure fixed by the 2021 Amendment Act.  (d) Overstates the amended composition — six is not the figure fixed by the 2021 Amendment Act.

Concept: State Backward Class Commissions became central to OBC reservation politics after the Supreme Court's March 2021 ruling in Vikas Kishanrao Gawali v. State of Maharashtra struck down OBC quotas in local-body elections for want of rigorous, commission-backed empirical data satisfying the 'triple test' laid down earlier in K. Krishna Murthy v. Union of India (2010). States, including Madhya Pradesh, amended their Backward Class Commission laws in 2021 to strengthen these bodies so they could generate the data needed to justify OBC reservation in panchayat and municipal elections.

State PCS 2022 Q22 — Madhya Pradesh GK PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2022 Q22 — Madhya Pradesh GK PYQ with Answer