bhopal

Updated: Mar 07, 2019 08:08 IST

Madhya Pradesh chief minister Kamal Nath on Wednesday announced he will implement the provision of 10% reservation for the economically weaker section among the general category and also increase the quota for other backward classes (OBC) from the existing 14% to 27%.

Last month, the CM had constituted a ministerial committee to work out modalities for implementing the 10% quota, after the central government approved a Constitutional amendment for the reservation for the economically weaker sections among the general category people.

Nath made this announcement at a programme held at Sagar, 186 km east of Bhopal, to distribute loan waiver certificates among farmers.

However, the CM didn’t announce any specific date to implement these steps.

“The state government will implement provision of 10% reservation for economically weaker section of general category. All sections in the society will get opportunity for progress and the government is committed for this,” the CM was quoted as saying by a government spokesperson.

As of now, the state government provides reservation of 50% to scheduled castes, scheduled tribes and other backward classes in government jobs and educational institutions.

The STs have a 20% quota, SCs 16% and OBCs have 14% quota. Once, the EWS quota is granted and the OBC quota is increased, the state will have overall 73% quota for different sections of society put together. BERHAMPORE: A 38-year-old polling booth-level worker of West Bengal’s ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) was shot dead in Murshidabad district on Tuesday night.

Gouranga Mondal is the second ruling party member to have been killed since February 25 when TMC office bearer, Nazimul Sheikh, was killed near Murshidabad’s Berhampore town.

Police have arrested one person so far in connection with Sheikh’’s murder though as many as five were named in the FIR including a former Murshidabad zilla parishad sabhadhipati Shiladitya Haldar and a former councillor of Berhampore municipality Hiru Haldar.

Both of them are from the Congress. Mondal was returning home from Kandi area, where he had gone for a training that the TMC had organised for election work, when he was shot dead.

TMC’s Kandi subdivision president, Goutam Roy, accused Congress workers of killing Mondal to regain the party’s lost ground in the area.

“In the evening when he was returning home, some goons stopped his motorbike around 250 metres from his house and fired three shots at him. To ensure his death, the goons also hurled two crude bombs at him,” said Roy.

District Congress spokesperson, Jayanta Das, denied the allegation.

“It has become a practice for Trinamool leaders to point fingers at us whenever their men are killed in factional feuds,” said Das.

Kandi police station in charge Prasanta Patra said one of the four accused— Sukhen Pal — has been arrested while his three alleged accomplices were on the run. “We are conducting raids to nab others [Akshay Pal, Sishir Pal, and Arun Ghosh],” he added.

Sukhen Pal worked as a civic police volunteer with the Kandi police station.