New Delhi: After 16 extensions, the long-awaited Rohini Commission set up in 2017, has finally submitted its report last month. It is expected to have proposed the sub-categorisation of the Central List of OBCs.A former chairperson of the National Commission for Backward Classes (NCBC), Justice Vangala Eswaraiah, has hit out at the drive to look at ‘sub-categorisation’ without a caste census, calling it a mistake. He has called for the findings to be “dumped.”He told the New Indian Express that “the government will implement the report as it wants to appease the OBCs as a poll strategy. The Rohini Commission should be dumped as it is. How can it reflect the caste reality without undertaking any survey?”The last caste census for India was done in 1931, before independence.In 2021, Justice Easwaraiah had told the Indian Express that without a caste census, this [of sub-categorisation of OBC castes] exercise “could perpetuate injustice.” He had then termed the sub-categorisation, which was likely to be proposed by the Commission headed by Justice G Rohini, as “un-scientific, atrocious and illegal”. Justice Eswaraiah had also said if the government wants to sub-categorise the OBCs in order to give them justice, it should either publicise the data of Socio Economic and Caste Census (SECC)-2011 or it should conduct a caste census.Hindustan Times on Saturday, September 2, 2023, reported on the Rohini Commission citing sources as saying that “it [sub-categorisation] is likely to be three or four where the castes with similar access to benefits compete with each other. It could be three bands — those that have got no benefits could get 10%, those with some benefits 10%, and those with maximum benefits 7% – or there could also be four bands.”The mandate of the Rohini Commission was to study how benefits within the OBCs should be divided and also update the list of 2633 OBC groups. In 2018, sharing its findings publicly, the Rohini Commission said that less than 1% of backward castes have cornered 50% of the reservation benefits in admissions to Central educational institutions and jobs in Central services between 2014 and 2018.The Union government is in a corner over Justice G. Rohini’s recommendations, in case the report actually suggests tiers within OBC reservations, as in an election year, the implementation of the report is bound to open a Pandora’s box.The Modi government has been on the defensive and uneasy over demands for a caste census rapidly gaining ground. Opposition parties support the move, Bihar has completed its census and work is underway in Odisha and Jharkhand.