According to the news agency PTI, the Karnataka cabinet has decided to issue an ordinance on Thursday to increase the reservations of scheduled castes and scheduled tribes in the state. The ordinance proposes increasing retention rates for SC and ST communities from 15% to 17% and 3% to 7%, respectively.

The decision to raise reservations for the ST and SC communities was made on the recommendation of a committee headed by a retired judge of Karnataka High Court, Judge H N Nagamohan Das. Cabinet officially approved the increase in reservations on October 8.

An ordinance is a temporary law passed by the president or governor when Congress or state legislatures are not in session. Once the ordinance is enacted, it must be ratified by parliament within six months or it will no longer be valid. The ordinance was decided at a cabinet meeting led by Chief Minister Basavavaraj Bommai.

“Following the decision to strengthen SC/ST reservations, we submitted a bill in this regard to the Cabinet and decided to refer it to the Governor for the ordinance,” Minister of Law and Parliamentary Affairs J C Madhuswamy said after the Cabinet meeting.

The decision will bring Karnataka’s retention rate to 56%, above the 50% cap set by the Supreme Court in the Indira Sawhney judgment. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government will recommend that the quota increase be included in the 9th Schedule of the constitution to give legal protection, the PTI report said.

“We thought earlier that an administrative decision would suffice, but later realised it could cause problems if challenged in court, so we decided to introduce an ordinance,” Madhuswamy added.

Karnataka, which earlier had only six SC castes, has now added 103 castes, nomads and slum dwellers, adding that it was decided to keep 17% to provide adequate representation to the SC community. Talking about the ST community, he said that ST had joined various communities such as Nayakas, Naiks, etc., so he decided to increase the ratio to 7%.

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The decision comes months before the state’s next parliamentary election is due.