Mumbai: After the Supreme Court (SC) last year struck down reservation in education and jobs to the Maratha community, certain groups have approached the Maharashtra State Commission for Backward Classes (MSCBC) seeking that they be included in the Other Backward Class (OBC) category.
“We have received applications from Maratha groups like Shivasangram, Maratha Kranti Morcha and others seeking that the Marathas be classified as OBCs. The applications were received last month and are being processed. The Commission held a meeting on Tuesday in Aurangabad and it was decided that it will meet in June in Pune to decide which sub-committee will examine this issue,” said B.L. Sagar Killarikar, member, MSCBC.
Shivasangram is led by Vinayak Mete, who is an ally of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and a member of the legislative council (MLC). Mete confirmed that he had made the application to the Commission. “At present, we have no quota benefits and fall in the open category with those eligible being covered under the economically weaker sections (EWS) category… hence, I have applied to the MSCBC to launch a survey (to assess the backwardness of the community) and make a recommendation to the government,” he said.
Mete added that however, the question of accommodating the Marathas in the OBC or socially and educationally backward (SEBC) categories could be decided after the survey was competed.
In May 2021, a five-judge Constitution bench of the SC had quashed 12% reservations in education and 13% in jobs for Marathas. Notably, three commissions chaired by Justices (retired) S.N Khatri (1995), R.M. Bapat (2008) and B.P. Saraf and had rejected demands to include the Marathas in the OBC category.
The B.P Mandal Commission (1980), National Commission for Backward Classes (NCBC) (2000) had also struck down this claim. However, the MSCBC headed by Justice M.G. Gaikwad (retired) recommended quotas for Marathas in November 2018.
OBC category communities cut across caste and religious lines and comprise an estimated 53% of the population. Many OBC leaders feel that including the numerically strong Marathas in the OBC category would deprive them of quota benefits.
With the Kunbis (peasants or tillers) — who are recognised as OBC — the Marathas (warriors) are estimated to form over 30% of Maharashtra’s population. The Marathas and Kunbis may not be endogamous. The Kunbis (tillers) form significant numbers in Konkan and Vidarbha.
Rajendra Kondhare of the Akhil Bharatiya Maratha Mahasangh (ABMM) said that classifying Marathas as OBCs is a long-standing demand. He added that the Maharashtra government has filed a review petition in the SC and making a petition to the Commission may indicate it was on weak ground.
OBC activist Shravan Deore termed this petition a futile exercise and noted that community groups persisted despite various commissions striking down the Maratha reservation demand. “The BJP government wrongly gave quota benefits to Marathas, which were struck down by the SC… even if they manage to get reservations for any number of times, it will still be struck down by the courts. Nowhere in India have quotas for Kshatriyas, land-holding and ruling castes stood the test of judicial scrutiny,” he noted.
Deore said that reservations were not the only panacea for social backwardness and added that the community’s leaders must explore other means for their advancement.
Maratha leaders had initially demanded quotas based on economic status rather than caste. On 22 March 1982, Annasaheb Patil, a legislator and iconic leader of the mathadi (head-load) workers, organised a massive Maratha morcha in Mumbai under the aegis of the ABMM, to stress the demand. Patil had threatened that if these demands were not conceded, he would die by suicide. When none of these demands were accepted by the Government, Patil carried out his threat the same night.
After the Mandal Commission report that recommended quotas for backward classes was implemented by the VP Singh-led Central government in 1990, the Maratha community started seeking caste-based quotas. However, some leaders like former minister Shalinitai Patil and Annasaheb Jawale of the Maratha youth organisation Chhava, stuck to the demand for quotas on economic grounds.
A series of silent, peaceful ‘Maratha Kranti Morchas’ organised since 2016 pressed for the quotas, but these protests took a violent turn in 2018. The Maratha mobilisation met with a similar counter mobilisation by OBCs and other social groups.
The erstwhile Devendra Fadnavis-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government approved a law granting a ring-fenced 16% quota for Marathas under a newly-created SEBC category. Though the Bombay High Court in June 2019 upheld the constitutional validity of this law, it trimmed the quotas to 12% (education) and 13% (government jobs). This was eventually struck down by the SC.