Internal Reservation in Karnataka: How Both Left and Right Dalit Groups Stand to Gain Over 1,500 Engineering & Medical Seats

— ✍️ Nethrapal

Karnataka government has notified the sub categorisation order for dalits after extensive deliberations. This order solves many inherent issues which paves the way for implementation of subcategorisation in Karnataka. One of the common narrative that is being seen is that right group dont benefit from the internal reservation. Contrary to this, in education space we estimate a gain of more than 1500 seats to 2000 seats for both left and right groups. 

The current order is extremely beneficial to both and I would be explaining by taking hard data from the Nagmohan Das Commission. Let's first look at the Medical, Engineering colleges. Nagmohan Das commission has provided the data for this which is enclosed below.

If we take Engineering college admission for 2024-25, we can see out of total 7205 SC candidates, there are around 576 Holeya, 493 Madiga, 11119 Banjara and 830 Bhovi community and while the rest of the seats from other states or other subcastes. 

Now if we take the total we have 

• Holeya - 576

• Madiga - 493

• Banjara and Bhovi - 1949

• Total - 3018 

On this 3018, we see the net proportion of each caste is Holeya -19%, Madiga -16%, Banjara and Bhovi - 65%.

But in the current model if we divide 3018 seats into three equal groups, we have roughly 1006 seats for each group. 

• Holeya Gain - 430

• Madiga Gain - 513

• Banjara and Bhovi Loss - 943

Clearly both the left and right communities will gain from this. 

Again if we take Medical college admission for 2024-25, we can see the following

• Holeya - 72

• Madiga -61

• Banjara and Bhovi - 294 

• Total - 427.

On this 427, we see the net proportion of each caste is Holeya - 17%, Madiga - 14%, Banjara and Bhovi - 69%. 

But in the current model, if we divide 427 seats into three equal groups, each group 142 seats. If we can see there will be net gain of 

medical seats for Holeya and Madiga and net loss for Banjara and Bhovi. 

We can see a lot of both right and left kids will enter Medical and Engineering after implementation of subcategorisation. 

So, clearly the skewed distribution would no more be there and lot of kids from both Left and Right community would benefit from this. Many right groups are arguing that internal reservation is bad for them. That is not the truth. Contrary to this view, facts suggest massive gains from internal reservation for both left and right groups. 

- The author has over 16 years of experience in the Indian Revenue Service (IRS), and is a seasoned tax enforcement leader who is passionate about ensuring compliance and fairness in the tax system. He has a strong academic background with a B-Tech from IIT-Madras in Electrical Engineering, where he received a Silver Medal, and a PGDM from IIM-Bangalore, where he specialized in Finance and Economics.