Mumbai: Maharashtra’s Mahayuti government scrapped a proposal for five percent reservation for some Muslim communities Tuesday, bringing renewed focus to years of research, debates, and legal battles over affirmative action for sections of the state’s Muslim population.
The government said the quota never had the force of a permanent law and was not fully implemented because the 2014 ordinance faced legal hurdles and had lapsed. It added that the latest order essentially updated administrative records to match court decisions and constitutional norms.
But critics said this move marks a step back from addressing long-standing disadvantages, which have been repeatedly recognised over the years.
The idea of reservations for disadvantaged Muslims in Maharashtra isn’t new. In the mid-2000s, national and state panels documented structural barriers that the Muslim community faced. The Sachar Committee, led by Rajinder Sachar, a former Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court, submitted a report in November 2006 on the social, economic, and educational status of the Muslim community in India. The committee found that Muslims fell below national averages on critical socio-economic indicators such as education, employment, and access to resources.
In Maharashtra, the report showed that the community had a low representation in government jobs relative to its population share and was over-represented among prison inmates.
Building on this, the Maharashtra government appointed a committee in 2008, led by Dr Mehmood-ur-Rehman, a retired IAS officer, to study the socio-economic conditions of Muslims in the state. The committee submitted its report in 2013, reaffirming the Sachar findings and providing more detailed evidence of educational and economic disparities.
Acting on these studies, the then Congress-Nationalist Congress Party government in Maharashtra introduced the Maharashtra State Reservation Ordinance, 2014, just before assembly elections that year.
The ordinance created a new category, Special Backward Category-A (SBC-A), which included nearly 50 Muslim subgroups entitled to five percent reservation in government jobs and admissions to government and government-aided educational institutions.
Before passing of the ordinance, in June 2014, Vinod Tawde, then the BJP Leader of Opposition in the Maharashtra Legislative Council, criticised the Congress-NCP government’s efforts.
“We do not support reservations based on religion, and the Constitution does not allow this,” he said.
At that time, the undivided Shiv Sena refrained from taking a stance on the matter.
Prithviraj Chavan, then-chief minister of Maharashtra, said, “The quota for Muslims is not religion-based but on the criterion of social and economic backwardness,” and added that, “if anyone approaches the court, we will explain our stance.”
In 2015, after the ordinance expired without being converted into legislation, former state Congress working committee member Naseem Khan labelled the BJP government “anti-Muslim”.
“The CM should have worked on converting the ordinance into a bill or issued a new ordinance. Since no action was taken, the ordinance lapsed. Now, there will be no reservation for Muslims in educational institutions,” he said.
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Judicial constraints
The policy faced immediate legal challenges. Petitioners argued that Maharashtra’s overall reservation share was already above 50 percent, the limit set by the Supreme Court of India in its landmark Indra Sawhney v. Union of India judgment, also known as the Mandal Commission case. They contended that a quota favouring one religious community was also constitutionally questionable.
In Shri Sanjeet Shukla vs The State of Maharashtra and 3 Ors, the Bombay High Court, in an interim order dated 14 November 2014, evaluated the constitutional validity of the two ordinances issued by the state. The division bench of then-Chief Justice Mohit S. Shah and Justice M.S. Sonak had been hearing petitions challenging Maharashtra Ordinance No. XIII of 2014, which provided reservation for the Maratha community under the Educationally and Socially Backward Classes (ESBC), and the Maharashtra Ordinance No. XIV of 2014, which provided a five percent reservation to specific Muslim communities under the newly created Special Backward Category (SBC-A).
Regarding reservation for Muslim groups, the court referred to the Sachar Committee Report and Dr Mehmood-ur-Rehman’s findings, recognising the reports on evidentiary basis. It noted that the reports indicated an “exceptional situation in the matter of education”, allowing for interim continuation of the five percent reservation in educational admissions, but it did not grant final constitutional approval.
The court also emphasised that even assuming the Muslim communities concerned were ‘backward’, the state could not exceed the 50 percent cap in public employment. Thus, the ordinance was allowed to operate only on an interim basis in education, but was suspended in the public employment space until a final hearing.
Citing Indra Sawhney, the Supreme Court bench had reiterated that reservation “should not normally exceed 50 percent” and can exceed this limit only in extraordinary situations supported by quantifiable data. It concluded that while limited relaxation might be allowed for educational admissions, the “50 percent ceiling” could not be breached in public employment, even for minority communities considered ‘backward’.
Never a law
The proposal for five percent reservation for specific Muslim communities in Maharashtra failed to become a binding law—largely because it was introduced through an ordinance rather than a law passed by the state legislature, and the ordinance lapsed after the change in government in late 2014.
Ordinances are temporary executive actions which a legislative act must replace within a set timeframe. Once the state legislature reconvenes, the government has a maximum of six weeks to pass the ordinance in both Houses. If this does not happen, the ordinance automatically lapses.
In Maharashtra, the government changed after the 2014 elections. Congress-NCP lost power, and the incoming BJP-led government did not act to convert the ordinance into law. This left it open to legal and administrative uncertainty.
Additionally, the high court’s order was interim, which meant the matter was never conclusively settled. Without a final judgment affirming the policy or a new law reworking it within constitutional boundaries, the quota remained in legal uncertainty and did not crystallise into a fully operational, permanent reservation framework.
Politics & reservation
Politically, the measure lacked continuity and consensus. The BJP-led government under Devendra Fadnavis maintained that religion-based reservation was constitutionally untenable and that any affirmative action must be rooted strictly in backwardness criteria within existing constitutional frameworks.
In 2018, the undivided Shiv Sena joined the Congress-NCP chorus, insisting on a Muslim quota amid conflicts with its then ally, the BJP.
In November 2018, then chief whip of the party in the Maharashtra legislative assembly, Sunil Prabhu, told ThePrint, “Muslims are a part of this country. They have been demanding reservations for the community’s betterment. If Shiv Sena is lending a voice to their demand so that the poor and oppressed get better opportunities, what is wrong with that?”
Looking back at the 2014 proposal, in 2020, Devendra Fadnavis, then-leader of the opposition in the state assembly, said, “The basic premise on which the Congress-NCP regime gave Muslims reservation was shaky. There were two versions: either the quota is acceptable—in both jobs and education—or it is legally and constitutionally valid. If the law does not conform to these parameters, it would never be acceptable.”
More than a decade after the original ordinance, on 17 February 2026, the Mahayuti government issued a fresh Government Resolution (GR) formally cancelling all earlier decisions and circulars linked to the 2014 Muslim quota framework and ending the issuance of caste and validity certificates under the now-defunct SBC-A category.
All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) Party Maharashtra President Imtiaz Jaleel took to X Wednesday, saying, “Maharashtra govt announces Ramadan gift for Muslims by scrapping 5% reservation in education. This was given after the HC noted that the education dropout rate was highest among Muslims. But still, we will tell our boys and girls not to leave education. Padenga India to Badega India!”
Former state Congress working committee member Naseem Khan alleged that the ruling Mahayuti coalition had committed an injustice. Speaking to reporters in Mumbai Wednesday, Khan said, “The subsequent Devendra Fadnavis government did not take the process forward, and even after the Bombay High Court granted interim relief for 5 percent educational reservation, its full legislative backing was never ensured.”
Maharashtra State Minority Commission Chairman, Pyare Khan, told ANI, “The previous government did not give it (reservations) at all. The previous government had just brought an ordinance. Where was it implemented as a law?”
He further asked, “If it had been implemented, then the reservation would not have been cancelled, and the government did not do anything. The Social Justice Department of Maharashtra has a normal procedure.”
“The Sachar and Mehmood-ur-Rehman reports mention conditions of Muslims in their times. If the conditions were so bad back in their day, they should have done work back then. But they only focused on politics and gathering votes at that time. Where did they work to uplift the Muslims?” he added.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)