Chennai: The Tamil Nadu Cabinet decided on Thursday to constitute a multi-member commission, headed by a retired judge of the High Court, to conduct a Social Justice Survey.
The meeting at the Secretariat was chaired by Chief Minister C Joseph Vijay and ran for about an hour and a half. It was the third Cabinet meeting since his government took office.
Briefing reporters afterwards, Minister for Energy Resources and Law C T R Nirmal Kumar said the survey would be conducted next year. He did not spell out how many members the commission will have, who else will sit on it, or when it will submit its report.
A social justice survey is the exercise that produces quantified data on each community's share of the population and of the state's education and employment. Parties that back such an exercise argue that policy and reservation formulas should rest on measured numbers rather than estimates.
The decision follows the government's first Cabinet meeting on June 5, where the 'Vetri Tamizhagam' vision document was placed before the ministry. The Cabinet then approved 436 welfare schemes and poll promises listed in it, and ministers were asked to work to deadlines.
Other subjects came up on Thursday as well, according to reports, including a decision in the Revenue department on poramboke land and clearance for a highways department project. Neither was detailed in the minister's briefing.
What the survey will ask, whether it will record caste, and how the commission's findings will be used are questions the government has not answered yet.
At the meeting, Chief Minister Vijay is said to have told ministers that the needs of the people should come first and that they should move quickly on public demands.
Tamil Nadu has been through a change of government, and the administration has been reworking its priorities since. Thursday's decision is being read as the next step in that sequence.