On October 2, Jarange-Patil ended his nine-day fast after chief minister Eknath Shinde promised to resolve the reservation issue in two months. But even after ending the fast, Jarange-Patil remains in the driver’s seat.
A renewed demand
The demand for the Maratha reservation is not new. The demand has been around since 1997 and the protests were at their peak in 2016.
In November 2018, then chief minister Devendra Fadnavis enacted the Maharashtra State Reservation for Socially and Educationally Backward Classes (SEBC) Act. This legislation granted a 16% reservation in education and government jobs specifically for the Maratha community.
The Bombay high court in 2019 upheld the quota, but wanted it reduced to 12-13%. In 2021, the Supreme Court scrapped it, citing the 50% cap on total reservations established in 1992. The court maintained that there were no “exceptional circumstances” or an “extraordinary situation” in Maharashtra that warranted the state government exceeding this limit.
The issue gained momentum once again in September. A protest in Jalna turned violent and videos of the police lathi-charging Maratha protestors spread like wildfire. Suddenly, Jarange-Patil became a household name.
What commissions have said
The Mandal Commission report did not consider Marathas in Maharashtra to be a backward community and thus, did not recommend that it should classified as part of reservations for the Other Backward Classes (OBCs).
In July 2008, a committee commissioned by the Maharashtra government and led by retired judge R.M. Bapat released a report rejecting the idea of reservations for Marathas. Six years later, in 2014, another committee chaired by Narayan Rane [a Congress minister then, a BJP minister now] presented a contrasting report. This committee argued that Marathas constituted 32% of the state’s population and required economic support, thereby justifying the need for reservations.
At that time, chief minister Prithviraj Chavan’s government approved a proposal to reserve 16% of government jobs and seats in educational institutions for Marathas, along with 5% for Muslims. An ordinance was swiftly passed to enforce this decision. However, the implementation of the ordinance was promptly contested in the Bombay high court, leading to a stay order in 2014.
The complications within
The Marathas are not a homogenous unit. There are various sub-castes within the Marathas, such as the Kunbis. The Kunbi community has a primarily agrarian background. They have traditionally been involved in farming and agriculture. Marathas are a landed caste.
In the 1960s, Panjabrao Deshmukh, a prominent figure in Maharashtra, conducted a survey challenging the Maratha identity of the farming community. He proposed that they were not Marathas but rather ‘Kunbis,’ a distinction that was controversial at the time and received widespread attention.
During that era, farmers in the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra obtained certificates identifying themselves as Kunbis in substantial numbers. However, farmers in the Marathwada and western Maharashtra region questioned whether they should be classified as ‘Other Backward Classes’ (OBCs), raising doubts about their traditional status as landowners.
Fast forward four decades, the Maratha farmers from the former ashram schools in Vidarbha now benefit from reservations under the Kunbi category. Meanwhile, Maratha farmers in Marathwada find themselves excluded from the Maratha reservation.
The current agitation by Jarange-Patil demands a blanket reservation for all Marathas under the Kunbi caste certificate.
BJP and Maratha agitation
The demand has larger implications for OBC communities and also for the BJP. The former are anxious that if the Marathas are included in the quota, it may dilute their share. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the state faces challenges in maintaining unity among its coalition allies – the Shiv Sena and the rebel faction of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) led by Ajit Pawar – while also appeasing its core OBC voter base.
To address the discontent within the OBC community, the BJP launched the ‘OBC Jagar Yatra,’ starting in the Vidarbha region. This initiative aims to emphasise the BJP’s commitment to the kalyan of the OBC community and assure them that their reservation will not be compromised for the Marathas.
Vidarbha, a stronghold of the Congress party before the BJP’s rise in 2014, holds significant political influence in Maharashtra, boasting ten Lok Sabha seats and 62 Assembly seats out of 288. However, the BJP faces a growing challenge from a resurgent Congress in Vidarbha, where the party has 15 of its 45 MLAs.
The BJP also saw some OBC leaders expressing discontent during Devendra Fadnavis’ tenure as chief minister (2014-2019), Some, like Pankaja Munde and Prakash Mehta, were apparently sidelined, while Eknath Khadse joined the NCP.
These internal challenges threaten the BJP’s stability in the region, adding complexity to the ongoing Maratha-OBC reservation issue.
Back to the present
Two MPs, both loyalists of chief minister Eknath Shinde, have resigned to support the agitation, while the protests have turned violent and targeted lawmakers in parts of Maharashtra. The issue has the potential of ballooning into a full-blown political issue in Maharashtra before the Lok Sabha polls, even though Jarange-Patil has ended his fast.
So, will the Marathas get reservations? Will the OBCs accept it? Will the BJP avert a political crisis in Maharashtra? These are some important questions which have no answers at this moment.
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