Paswan and Manjhi tell each other to resign over SC sub-quotas

Union minister Chirag Paswan spent Saturday telling another Union minister, Jitan Ram Manjhi, to resign. Manjhi and his son, Bihar minister Santosh Kumar Suman, spent the evening telling Paswan to do the same. Both men sit in the National Democratic Alliance. Both run parties that live off Scheduled Caste votes in Bihar. They do not agree on what the reservation list inside that category should look like.

The spark was Suman's call for a review of reservation policy and for sub-categorisation of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. Paswan treated that call as a step toward a creamy layer inside SC quotas. "If Jitan Ram Manjhi feels these measures should be implemented, should he not resign first?" he asked reporters. "Let him introduce the creamy layer concept. After all, he would fall under that category too. He should resign, and his son should resign as well."

Manjhi answered at a Hindustani Awam Morcha event in Gaya. He said Paswan's line would leave the poorest groups without the share they do not now receive. "Since he has no concern for our poor people, Chirag Paswan should resign," he said.

Two different instruments

Suman later wrote that he had not mentioned a creamy layer in his original remarks. Quota-within-quota and creamy layer, he said, are separate tools. Sub-categorisation would split the SC list so that groups with less political weight receive a reserved slice. A creamy layer would cut relatively better-off families out of the quota on income or job grounds. The Supreme Court has allowed states to sub-categorise SCs. The Centre has told the same court that the creamy-layer rule used for Other Backward Classes cannot be extended to SCs and STs.

Paswan's Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) has opposed sub-quotas for years. He argues that SC reservation rests on social exclusion, not on a household balance sheet, and that slicing the list would set Dalit groups against each other. "Otherwise, the way society will be divided, the fight for social justice will lose its meaning," he said.

Manjhi's HAM(S) represents castes inside the SC list that have long said the larger groups take most of the jobs and college seats. That complaint is older than this weekend. It now has a Union minister and a state minister repeating it in public against another Union minister from the same coalition.

Why the row reached the cabinet

Bihar is the reason. Both parties need the same electorate and will need it again whenever the next Assembly contest arrives. Paswan is third-generation in a national Dalit party. Manjhi is a former chief minister whose base is narrower and poorer. A fight over the internal arithmetic of the quota is a fight over who speaks for that electorate.

The NDA can absorb a day of mutual resignation demands. It cannot absorb a split that turns into separate campaigns on the same reservation file. The Prime Minister's Office has not issued a line. Silence is the current method.

Suman said he was ready to resign if Paswan went first, and noted that Paswan's party is larger. That is theatre with a precise audience. It also leaves a written record that HAM(S) will not drop sub-categorisation.

The legal ground under the argument

The creamy-layer doctrine for OBCs comes from Indra Sawhney. SC and ST reservation has been treated as a response to untouchability and historic exclusion, which is why the Centre has resisted importing the income test. Sub-categorisation is a different case. Several states have already tried it. The Supreme Court has said they may, if they have data.

Paswan wants the debate, if it happens at all, on the floor of Parliament rather than in Gaya press conferences. Manjhi wants the data argument treated as a moral one about who inside the SC list is still left out. Those are not the same speech. Saturday made that plain. The coalition now has to decide whether the file stays in the court and the ministries, or becomes a public split that Bihar voters can use.