The Karnataka Cabinet decided to promulgate an ordinance on Thursday to hike reservations for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in the state, news agency PTI reported. The ordinance proposed hiking the reservation for SC and ST communities from 15% to 17% and from 3% to 7%, respectively.

The decision to hike the reservations for the ST and SC community was following recommendations from a commission headed by a retired judge of Karnataka High Court Justice H N Nagamohan Das. The Cabinet accorded its formal approval to increase the reservation on Oct 8th.

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An Ordinance is a temporary law that is passed by the President or the Governor of a state when the Parliament or a state Assembly is not in session. Once an ordinance is promulgated, the Assembly needs to approve it in a span of six months, failing which, it remains no more in effect.

The decision of the Ordinance was taken at a Cabinet meeting that was headed by Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai.

“Following the decision to enhance the SC/ST reservation, we introduced a bill to this effect before the cabinet, and it was decided to send it to the Governor to promulgate an ordinance,” Law and Parliamentary Affairs Minister J C Madhuswamy said after the Cabinet meeting, as quoted by PTI.

The decision will take the reservation tally in Karnataka to 56%, which is above the 50% cap that was fixed by the Supreme Court in the Indira Sawhney judgment. The ruling-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government would recommend bringing the quota hike under the 9th Schedule of the Constitution to give it legal protection, in the days to come, the PTI report said.

“We had earlier felt that executive decision would be enough, but later realised that if it is questioned in court of law, it may lead to issues, so we have decided to bring in an ordinance,” Madhuswamy added.

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He said that there were only six SC castes in Karnataka earlier, and now 103 castes, nomads and slum-dwellers have been added, adding that to give adequate representation to the SC community the decision was taken to give 17% reservation. Speaking of the ST community, he said that various communities like Nayakas and Naiks have been added to the ST, and therefore the decision was taken to increase it to 7%.

The decision comes just months before the next Assembly elections are due in the state.