Maratha Quota Stir: A Long-Drawn Politico-Legal Battle, Now a Ticking Time Bomb

Observers believe the confrontation between the OBCs & Marathas is inevitable if the matter isn't handled amicably.

The paradox is that all political parties in the premier state favour the reservation for the Marathas given its reach and influence still, a fool-proof way is eluding.

(Photo: Namita Chauhan/ The Quint)

With the Maratha reservation issue again coming to the fore, the road ahead is full of minefields for the BJP-dominated Maharashtra government. The issue is such a delicate matter that a step here or there could cause a disaster.

So it is natural that the Eknath Shinde government is in a fix on the next course of action and time is running out with the Lok Sabha elections around the corner followed by the Assembly polls.

Reservation To Score Brownie Points

Last week, the lathi charge on agitators demanding reservation for the Marathas in the Jalna district of Marathwada again re-ignited passions and politics over the sensitive matter. The issue has failed to subside despite Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, who is also in charge of Home Affairs, offering an apology.

There have been no quick-fix solutions with the state government for the protracted problem involving some 32 per cent population of the 12.5 crore population of Maharashtra where the dominant caste which calls the shots in politics is seeking quota based on social and economic backwardness.

No easy or straight answers are available despite a long legal process so far and political consultations.

The paradox is that all political parties in the premier state favour the reservation for the Marathas given its reach and influence still, a fool-proof way is eluding. Rivals play much politics on the issue in the game of oneupmanship.

Why the Reservation Was Introduced?

Maharashtra had contended before the Supreme Court that "extraordinary conditions” such as the increase in the number of suicides due to indebtedness and deteriorating incomes among Maratha families justify the enactment of the Socially and Economically Backward Classes Act, 2018 (SEBC Act, 2018) on 29 November 2018.

The Act exceeds the recommended quotas, granting 16% reservation for Marathas in Maharashtra’s state educational institutions and appointments to public service.

The argument was that the failure to treat this group as backward for decades has pushed its members deeper into social and educational backwardness.

Though most of the chief ministers of the state have been Marathas, a section of the community has been facing the heat in the changing times of urbanisation and globalisation and for failing to keep pace for want of education.

In short, there were ‘haves’, but ‘have-nots’ were growing by the day, especially in the countryside in times of agrarian distress.

SC Overruled Govt Decision

The matter is ticklish. In April this year, the Supreme Court refused to re-examine its decision by which it had declared a Maharashtra law unconstitutional to grant reservation to the Marathas and said there was no error in its 2021 judgment on the issue.

SC which pronounced its judgment on 5 May 2021, held that the 50% limit on reservations should not be crossed. The Gaikwad Commission which went into the backwardness of the Marathas, the Bombay HC judgment, or the SEBC Act all failed to lay out an 'extraordinary situation’ to fall within the exception to this limit, it held.

The state government has announced its plans to file a curative petition. The instances of such petitions being filed and heard are far and few between.

A section believes that after the SC struck down the reservation given by the state government, the only viable option left with it is the inclusion of Marathas in the OBC category, which the castes in the existing OBC category are opposing strongly.

The OBCs are also sizeable in number in Maharashtra but have failed to get a fair share in power with the Marathas dominating since the formation of Maharashtra on 1 May 1960, after the bifurcation of the erstwhile Bombay state into Maharashtra and Gujarat.

Observers believe that the confrontation between the OBCs and Marathas is inevitable if the matter is not handled amicably.

Experts contend that unless the Centre steps in effectively, a resolution is not possible as the issues raised in the SC verdict could only be addressed by the Centre.

Political Tug of War Over the Issue

Veteran leader Sharad Pawar of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) has demanded that the Centre remove the 50 per cent cap on quota and raise it by 15-16 per cent to accommodate more communities. To give the quota as part of the OBC reservation would adversely affect the backward classes, he says.

Asim Sarode, a prominent lawyer from Maharashtra, is smelling a rat in the politics over the Maratha reservation issue. He wondered on microblogging site X whether some alibis are being discovered for the removal of Eknath Shinde from Chief Ministership through the issue. This, he said, was because the state government could do precious little to resolve the matter and it was for the Centre to come out with a Constitution amendment.

State Congress Chief Nana Patole wants the special session of Parliament meeting this month to address the issue. "The BJP has had a significant majority government at the Centre for the past nine years and could have made the necessary amendments to grant reservation to the Maratha community," says Patole echoing other opposition leaders.

The spotlight has shifted on the issue as a Maratha youth Manoj Jarande Patil, on the seventh day of his indefinite fast in Jalna district, is seeking to restore the ‘kunbi’ status to the Marathas in the Marathwada region which was earlier part of the Hyderabad state during Nizam’s time.

He contends that the Kunbis who stayed back in the Hyderabad region which is now the Telangana State enjoy OBC reservation.

A Committee headed by an Additional Chief Secretary has been looking into the matter since May. An OBC organisation has threatened agitation if the Marathas were given such a quota in the region.

A Timeline of Events Batting for Reservation

On 9 July 2014, Maharashtra promulgated an ordinance granting 16% reservation in education and public employment to the Maratha community. This followed decades of protests for a demand for ‘Maratha Reservation’.

On 14 November 2014, the Bombay High Court issued an interim order staying the ordinance’s implementation. A challenge to the interim order was dismissed by the Supreme Court on 18 December in the same year.

Thereafter, Maharashtra enacted the Socially and Educationally Backward Classes Act, 2014. This granted 16% reservation to educationally and socially backward classes, among whom the Maratha community was counted. On 7 April 2016, the Bombay High Court stayed the implementation of the Act due to its semblance to the ordinance.

On 4 January 2017, the Maharashtra state government issued a notification establishing the Maharashtra State Backward Class Commission.

The Commission, chaired by Justice Gaikwad, recommended 12% and 13% reservation for Marathas in educational institutions and appointments in public services, respectively.

Upon the Commission’s recommendations, Maharashtra passed the SEBC Act, 2018 on 29 November 2018. The Act exceeds the recommended quotas, granting 16% reservation for Marathas in Maharashtra’s state educational institutions and appointments to public service.

The constitutional validity of the Act was challenged before the Bombay High Court by three lead petitions, along with several other writ petitions.

Constitutional experts have been cautioning that if one community is granted such a quota, it will open the floodgates for reservation in favour of dominant castes in other states. If there was a legitimate reason to go beyond 50 per cent reservation, as in the case of Tamil Nadu, it could have been inserted in the Ninth Schedule of the Constitution, their argument goes.

(Sunil Gatade is a former Associate Editor of the Press Trust of India. This is an opinion article and the views expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)