Kerala HC has upholded the state government’s decision to provide a quota in universities and colleges to poor students from the forward communities. If this stands then 10% seats in government-run colleges and 7.5% seats in universities would be reserved for poor students from forward classes. This decision was challenged in HC by Muslim Jamat.
Our View: It is a good decision to give reservation based on economic status as it is difficult to find a society where someone with a good economic status suffers due to his/her caste. This only seems a probable in very remote or tribal areas of India. But again there also socially backward is a subset of economically backward classes. Like if you consider institutions like IIT, there you have students from backward class get admission even though they are well off, with strong financial status. And there are even instance when seats allotted for backward class are not filled completely. So any reservation should factor in the economic strata and filter out students/people who are well off. For a state like Kerala which had very well implemented the reservation system based on caste it is time to move to reservation system based on caste. On a different note, the word backward and forward class should not be used rather a different term should be used.