While assembly elections are two years away, the topic of reservation for Other Backward Classes (OBCs) has started resonating in Madhya Pradesh politics with the state high court due for the final hearing on July 13 on petitions related to the matter. . State Congress chief Kamal Nath, whose eyes are not only on 2023 elections but also some bypolls, had tweeted on July 8 that he had proposed raising the OBC quota in the state to 27% in 2019. The Chief Minister accused the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government of not making any serious effort to implement it.
A Supreme Court judgment states that the total percentage of reservation given on the basis of caste cannot exceed 50%. Increasing the OBC quota to 27% would mean that the total reservation given in Madhya Pradesh would reach 73%.
The former CM alleged that some petitions against reservation were filed in the Madhya Pradesh High Court, but due to lack of proper defense by the government, the increased quota is yet to be implemented. He said that if the government keeps its stand firmly, then the backward classes of Madhya Pradesh will get the benefit of 27 percent reservation.
The Congress leader said that his party’s government had implemented this reservation in 2003. However, after the Shivraj government came to power, the matter remained in court for 10 years and finally the reservation was canceled due to weak defense by the administration.
Nath urged the BJP government in Madhya Pradesh to “abandon its anti-backward class mindset and cooperate in social justice”.
BJP’s denial
Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan retaliated the next day and called the OBC quota issue Kamal Nath’s sin. He alleged that Congress has caused maximum damage to Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST) and OBCs.
“As chief minister, Kamal Nath had issued an ordinance on OBC quota and later stayed the matter in court,” Chouhan said. The CM said that if Congress leaders were true sympathizers of backward classes, they would have got it implemented properly but they were only showing off. “Nath knew that reservation was not possible. His intention was faulty; His policies were also similar.”
BJP spokesperson Rajnish Agrawal said that the Narendra Modi government at the Center implemented various schemes by giving constitutional status to the OBC commission. “After independence, the backward classes got the highest position in the Modi cabinet. Congress leaders should tell in which states they gave 27 per cent reservation to OBCs.
Minister of State Bhagat Singh Kushwaha also targeted the Congress on the issue of reservation. During a press briefing, he said that the Congress only spoke of backward classes after independence, while the BJP worked on the ground. He expressed his gratitude to PM Narendra Modi for inducting 27 OBC ministers in his cabinet, which underwent a reshuffle last week.
Sources also said that the Madhya Pradesh unit of the BJP is planning to publicize the fact of OBCs getting significant representation in the Union Cabinet.
political wrangling
A major section in terms of population (at around 50%), the OBCs come at the center whenever elections are held. It was the same in the last assembly elections in 2018 when anti-reservation organization General Minority Backward Classes Welfare Association (SAPKS) polarized the general and OBC categories against Chouhan’s famous remark that no one dares to touch the quota.
Strong anti-quota sentiments had affected the BJP in several seats, especially in the Gwalior-Chambal region.
Chouhan himself is the OBC poster boy for the BJP, like CM Bhupesh Baghel in Congress-ruled Chhattisgarh.
Away from political squabbles, the Madhya Pradesh High Court is scheduled to hear the final hearing on July 13 on the issue of 27% OBC quota and various petitions filed against it.
The petitioners have appealed to the court why the quota should be canceled when the state government has justified it on the basis of OBC population.
However, legal experts believe that the Congress’ decision to increase the OBC quota from 14% to 27% was just a political gimmick.
Advocate Aditya Sanghi, who was among the first petitioners to approach the HC against the increased quota, told News18 that the Constitution and the basic legal precedent of the Supreme Court of India do not agree with the efforts to implement the increased OBC quota. Huh. Sanghi said that as far as the plea of the state government is concerned, after the Supreme Court’s decision on Maratha reservation in Maharashtra, it is no longer a ground.
He said that the judgment clearly states that under no circumstances reservation can be given on the basis of population.
Advocate Rameshwar Thakur told the media that caste based data was never released after the 1931 census. He said that many states are offering 27% OBC reservation but backward classes in MP are deprived of it.
The state government had disclosed the caste-based census data before the high court last month during the hearing of the matter. Citing 2011 census data, the MP government said that the OBC population in the state is 50.09%, followed by STs (21.1%) and SCs (15.6%). State capital Bhopal has the highest OBC population of 63.14 percent.
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