PATNA: To insulate the increased reservation for deprived classes in Bihar from judicial intervention, the Nitish Kumar cabinet approved a resolution to request the Centre for including the state legislation on quota hike in the 9th schedule of Constitution.The cabinet also cleared a proposal demanding special category status for Bihar, as it will ease the burden in implementing five poverty alleviation schemes worth Rs 2.5 lakh crore for the upliftmnt of 94 lakh poor families “in less than five years”.The state government notified the bill passed by the assembly recently, raising the quota in education and jobs for scheduled castes, scheduled tribes, backward classes and extremely backward classes to 65%, way beyond the apex court cap of 50%.Additional chief secretary in the cabinet secretariat, S Siddharth, said the Bihar government’s plea to Centre was that the increase in quota should be put in the 9th schedule of the Constitution, like it was done in the case of Tamil Nadu, so that no “judicial intervention is made”.The 9th schedule includes a list of Central laws and state laws that cannot be challenged in courts.After the cabinet meeting, CM Nitish, in a series of posts on X, said: “For the first time, the caste-based headcount has been conducted in Bihar.

On the basis of the data related to their social, economic and educational conditions, the quota for SCs has been increased from 16% to 20%, for STs from one to two, for EBCs from 18 to 25% and for BCs from 12 to 18%.”