Mumbai: Outsiders attending the Maharashtra State Backward Class Commission meetings, differences over what parameters to use to determine the backwardness of Marathas, insistence on a limited socioeconomic survey of the caste instead of an all-caste census, and show-cause notices sent to its members with “flimsy reasons”. These are some of the allegations that two members who resigned from the commission this month — Balaji Killarikar and Laxman Hake — have made against the state government after they resigned from the body.
The commission looks into matters of including or excluding a particular caste from categories such as Vimukta Jati and Nomadic Tribes (VJNT), Other Backward Classes (OBC) and Special Backward Classes (SBC). The commission, a quasi-judicial body, conducts extensive studies and submits its report to the Maharashtra government.
Last week, Killarikar and Hake resigned from the panel citing government interference in the panel’s functioning. The resignations and the allegations come at a time when the issue of the Maratha reservation is gathering steam in the state, months before parliamentary and assembly elections.
“There were some differences of opinion in the backward class commission with regard to some of the parameters given by the state government. There was some direct and indirect interference by the government with an agenda,” Hake, an OBC leader currently associated with the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray), told ThePrint.
The state backward class commission is an independent body, he said.
“It has rights under the Constitution. We refused to work with the government’s agenda. Their insistence was to check the backwardness of the Maratha community in the shortest possible time,” he said.
ThePrint tried to reach Atul Save, Maharashtra’s Other Backward Bahujan Welfare Minister — the commission was constituted under the department — through calls and text message but hadn’t got a response at the time of publication of this report.
Marathas, who form an estimated 33 percent of the state’s population, have periodically protested for reservation in government jobs and educational institutions of the state.
In 2021, the Supreme Court had rejected a report on the social and economic backwardness of the Marathas submitted by the commission’s former chairman, Justice M.G. Gaikwad (Retd), and struck down the quota given to Marathas under the ‘socially and educationally backward class’ as “unconstitutional”.
Earlier this year — faced with the latest round of protests just ahead of the 2024 elections — the Maharashtra government filed a curative petition to get the Supreme Court to reconsider its decision.
In October this year, the Maharashtra government announced it would grant Kunbi certificates — Kunbis are a sub-Maratha caste group that’s counted among the state’s OBC — to Marathas to ensure the community is counted among the state’s other backward classes. The move sparked yet another row, with the state’s other OBC groups raising concerns.
Meanwhile, Maratha activist Manoj Jarange Patil, who’s been at the centre of the fresh Maratha protests, has reportedly warned the Eknath Shinde government against missing their 24 December deadline to grant reservation.
The government will “regret it”, he told the media at Nanded Saturday.
Also Read: Related communities with agrarian roots — why Marathas are claiming to be Kunbis amid quota stir
‘Govt interference in independent commission’
The Maharashtra State Backward Class Commission has nine members.
According to Hake and Killarikar, the most recent conflict due to which they resigned and a third member is contemplating resignation was a letter by Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde dated 13 November with ‘terms of reference’ on how to go about the Maratha quota.
“The authorities who have a quasi-judicial authority are being given directions by the state government…One member post was vacant, so the state government appointed one person to the vacant post. Thereafter, the chairman of the commission had a meeting about this (Maratha quota) with government representatives and advisers appointed by the government to work on the Maratha quota,” Killarikar, a lawyer for over three decades, told ThePrint.
According to him, three members of some private institutions — appointed by the governments to assist the quota battle — attended two of the commission’s meetings, prompting objections from some members.
The biggest objection that the two members who resigned said they had was to the state government’s directions of only conducting a limited survey and adopting different parameters from the ones that exist to help determine the socioeconomic backwardness of the Marathas.
The terms of reference shared by Shinde, which ThePrint has accessed, say the commission should determine the criteria and parameters to be adopted in determining social and economic backwardness for the benefits of reservation, determine exceptional circumstances for the benefits of reservation, and collect fresh quantifiable data and scrutinise data collected in the past.
The terms of reference also say that the commission should ascertain the existence of exceptional circumstances or extraordinary situations in the context of the Marathas to justify exceeding the 50 percent reservation cap laid down by the Supreme Court.
Other than that, the terms of reference ask the commission to determine the adequacy of representation of the Maratha community in public sector employment and ascertain the proportion of the Maratha population in Maharashtra.
According to Hake, this poses a problem because a limited survey would mean there is no yardstick to determine these things.
“In the case of Maratha reservation, if we have to check Maratha backwardness, then if Marathas are now backward, in whose comparison are they backward? Is it as compared to the open category? As compared to OBCs? Who has how much representation in education? Till these things are not found authentically on our dais, how will we justify our case?” he asked.
It’s for this reason that some members asked for a survey of all castes, he said. “And the government was opposed to this,” he added.
Killarikar said the commission had passed a resolution on 12 August 2022 saying that the state needs a pan-Maharashtra survey of all castes based on which it can decide on the petitions that come before it.
“We also asked for Rs 435 crore of funds for such an exercise. But, despite reminders, the government did nothing about it,” he said.
In his resignation letter dated 1 December — which ThePrint has seen — Killarikar said that granting reservation to any section of the population, including the Marathas, in the absence of a competitive study based on genuine data will “prove to be an illusion and may not sustain in the court of law”.
Show-cause notices
Killarikar told ThePrint that the commission members had about three meetings to discuss the interpretation of the terms of reference before the two resigned.
Besides the “limited survey”, the other major sticking point in the meeting was about adopting different criteria to determine the social and economic backwardness of the Marathas.
“To date, whatever proposals had come from different castes to us, we had used existing indicators. If we use different indicators for the Maratha community, then it will be discrimination,” Killarikar said.
Another issue — unrelated to the Maratha quota — that disillusioned some members of the commission relates to a case of Other Backward Classes (OBC) reservation in the Bombay High Court. Some Maratha clansmen had challenged the reservation of certain castes that fall under the OBC category through three public interest litigations. The commission had prepared an affidavit to be filed in court a year ago, but it has yet to be filed, Killarikar said.
“The affidavit was revised again and was kept before the meeting of the commission. The member secretary was once again told to submit it, but he didn’t do it. Instead, he carried it to the CM and he said that the advocate general should see the affidavit. We objected to that, too, saying the commission is independent. Impartiality and independence is the pre-condition (of the commission’s working),” he said.
Hake and Killarikar both said that the state government sent show-cause notices dated 22 and 23 November to at least three members — including themselves — citing “weak” reasons. These reasons were related to incidents linked with the members’ work outside of the commission, they said, without elaborating.
The third member who received a notice is also contemplating resigning from the commission, they added.
“What has happened is that Maharashtra was progressive but now if someone says something, someone resigns, someone talks about the Constitution and the law, then that person’s caste is seen. If he belongs to OBCs, if he belongs to Vimukta Jati and Nomadic Tribes, (the impression is) he will not give the reservation to Marathas. It is all being seen through this lens,” Hake said, adding that he received a backdated notice, which didn’t give him any time to respond.
“I didn’t like answering to such a notice, so I resigned considering all the differences,” he told ThePrint.
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)