Kalelkar Commission

Adhering to Article 340 of the Constitution of India, the First Backward Classes Commission was set up by a presidential order on 29 January 1953 under the chairmanship of Kaka Kalelkar.

[1] Its terms of references were to: For identifying socially and educationally backward classes, the commission adopted the following criteria: Following descriptions was used for classification of various communities as educationally and socially backward: The commission submitted its report on 30 March 1955.

It had prepared a list of 2,399 backward castes or communities for the entire country and of which 837 (* starred communities) had been classified as the ‘most backward’ Some of the most noteworthy recommendations of the commission were: Kaka Kalelkar, the Chairman, took a rather equivocal stand on the issue, though he did not record formal minutes of dissent, in his forwarding letter to the President he opposed some recommendations made by the commission The commission’s observations: This commission also examined the existing list of Schedule Caste and Schedule Tribes and recommended certain additions to, and deletions from, these lists.

These recommendations were duly examined in consultation with the State Governments, the Commissioner of the Schedule Tribes and the Deputy Registrar General, and the Government accepted these recommendations by passing The Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes Orders (Amendment) Act, 1956.

This report was rejected by the Central government on the ground that it had not applied any objective tests for identifying the Backward Class.