NEW DELHI: As the government has a rethink on the proposal to relax the eligibility age in employment for upper castes under the 10% quota, it now emerges that social justice ministry tried to overcome the hurdle of the economically weaker sections’ “competitiveness” by arguing that the poor suffer from an educational handicap and should be provided relief.Age relaxation and increase in number of attempts for job examinations for poor upper castes is a contentious issue. The social justice ministry (MSJ), as reported by TOI, has withdrawn the Cabinet proposal it had circulated this February.When the ministry's proposal was first red-flagged in August 2019, the DoPT said that age relaxation could only be given after observing if a particular quota was being filled or not. It even cited the time lag between the implementation of SC/ST/OBC quota and the provision of age-attempt relaxation to these categories.Given the hurdle, when the ministry moved the proposal again, it argued for the policy from the standpoint of generic educational handicap of the poor.“A candidate because of his poor financial background would not be able to access and afford better education and complete the qualifying degree within the normal limit of age as mandated by the government at present. He/she would be able to complete education and obtain qualifying degree only after taking additional number of years. It is, therefore, felt that he/she would be able to get the true intended benefit of EWS reservation only if the age relaxation of 3 years as available to OBCs is provided in direct recruitment to Central government jobs,” argued the Cabinet note, seen by the TOI.As it appears, the reasoning tried to undercut the argument about the EWS’s competitiveness.However, experts underline that relaxation in eligibility age-attempts are aimed to help a social group better position itself for employment quota. Given the social and educational handicap of SCs, STs and OBCs, their quotas in initial years resulted in high backlog as not enough candidates met the standards of qualification.In contrast, it remains uncertain if EWS quota would suffer from the same handicap. And if the 10% posts are filled by enough candidates from among poor upper castes, the push for providing age relaxation would suffer a serious setback.Given the strong political lobbying which resulted in a constitutional amendment that introduced “economic backwardness” as criteria for affirmative action and inaugurated the EWS quota, the push for age relaxation has found a willing partner in the BJP regime -- the social justice ministry has made two attempts in last eight months.Backing the proposal, the Cabinet note claimed, “Upon implementation of this policy, the numerous EWS category job aspirants/unemployed youth preparing for the several Central government exams (Railways, Banking, SSC, UPSC, PSUs, Police, Posts, etc) would get opportunity to appear for the exams. They would also be able to secure the jobs and livelihood for their dependent family members.”