A curative petition mentioned before the bench of Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud for urgent listing last month, is set to be heard in due course by the Supreme Court.
The issue first cropped up in 1997 with demands for a separate reservation for the community. However, in July 2008, a committee set up by the Maharashtra government which was headed by retired Judge RM Bapat gave its report which did not favor reservations for Marathas.
Six years later, in 2014, a committee headed by now BJP minister Narayan Rane, submitted a report to the government stating that 32 per cent of the population in the state was that of Marathas, who needed economic upliftment and thus a reservation was needed.
The government headed by then Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan, approved a proposal to reserve 16 per cent of government jobs and seats in educational institutions for Marathas and 5 per cent for Muslims.
An ordinance was immediately passed but it was challenged before the Bombay High Court, which stayed its implementation in 2014.
The high court pointed out that the data used by the state to back its assertion that the community is backward was ‘faulty’. The government then formed a commission to collect the data of backwardness of the community.
The nine-member Maharashtra State Backward Class Commission headed by Justice MG Gaikwad, submitted its report in 2018.
Accepting the report, the Maharashtra government, headed by then Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, passed the Maharashtra State Reservation for Socially and Educationally Backward Classes (SEBC) Act on November 30, 2018.
The act provided 16 per cent reservation in education and government jobs for the Maratha community. This did not include the Muslim reservation though.
The Act was then challenged before the Bombay High Court, which in 2019, upheld that the community was backward but reduced the reservation from 16 per cent to 12 per cent in education and 13 per cent in jobs.
However, this increased the overall reservation ceiling to 64 per cent and 65 per cent, respectively. The High court said that the 50 per cent ceiling on the reservation set by the Supreme Court in the Indra Sawhney (Mandal) judgment of 1992 could be breached in exceptional circumstances.
The High Court judgment was challenged in the Supreme Court and a constitutional bench in 2021, held that there was no justification for breaking the 50 per cent ceiling which was now being constitutionally recognized.
The Supreme Court said that there was no extraordinary circumstance to cross the 50 per cent mark, adding that Marathas were a “dominant forward class and are in the mainstream of National life”. The bench also held in the judgment by a 3:2 majority that the states have no power to identify the SEBC after the 102nd amendment to the Constitution.
The Parliament immediately moved to clarify this issue in 2021 in the 127th Constitutional Amendment which restored the power of the states and union territories to identify the SEBCs.
In the meantime, the Maharashtra government then set up a committee headed by former Chief Justice of the Allahabad High Court Dilip Bhosale which studied the Supreme Court’s order.
The committee had recommended that then Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray-led government file a review petition in the Supreme court over the Maratha reservation issue. The government did file it, but it was dismissed in April 2023.
Following this, a curative petition was filed in the Supreme Court which is likely to be heard in due course.
Advocate Gunratan Sadawarte, who had represented the petitioner challenging the reservation to Marathas said, “The Supreme Court had said that the community is not backward and that reservation cannot exceed the 50 per cent limit. Whoever is in power, they cannot touch the basic structure of the constitution. We cannot go away from the mandate. Merits of people should not suffer. If the government crosses the 50% reservation, then we will definitely challenge it again in court”.
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