Jharkhand’s Domicile bill

Subject: Polity

Context: Jharkhand Cabinet approves draft Bill with 1932 as the cut-off year for domicile.

Concept :

The Jharkhand Cabinet approved the draft ‘Local Resident of Jharkhand Bill’ of 2022, keeping 1932 as the cut-off year for “proof of land records” for defining a local.
The second draft legislative proposal approved by the Cabinet seeks to increase reservation from the current 50% to 67% in Jharkhand.
As per the Bill, reservation for STs will be increased to 28%, for OBCs to 27%, and STs to 12%.
Bills will be introduced in the Assembly and, after the passage of both, the state government will send them to the Centre (apart from the Governor), with a proposal seeking an amendment placing the two laws in the Ninth Schedule of the Constitution to avoid judicial scrutiny.

Ninth Schedule

The Schedule contains a list of central and state laws which cannot be challenged in courts and was added by the Constitution (First Amendment) Act, 1951.
The first Amendment added 13 laws to the Schedule. Subsequent amendments in various years have taken the number of protected laws to 284 currently.
It was created by the new Article 31B, which along with Article 31A was brought in by the government to protect laws related to agrarian reform and for abolishing the Zamindari system.
While Article 31A extends protection to ‘classes’ of laws, Article 31B shields specific laws or enactments.
While most of the laws protected under the Schedule concern agriculture/land issues, the list includes other subjects.
Article 31B also has a retrospective operation which means that if laws are inserted in the Ninth Schedule after they are declared unconstitutional, they are considered to have been in the Schedule since their commencement, and thus valid.
Although Article 31B excludes judicial review, the apex court has said in the past that even laws under the Ninth Schedule would be open to scrutiny if they violated Fundamental Rights or the basic structure of the Constitution.