Mumbai: Three members of the Maharashtra State Backward Classes Commission have resigned — two of them citing government interference, while the chairman of the commission has stepped down without specifying any reason.
Optically, the crumbling of the commission reflects badly on the Eknath Shinde-led government, especially at a time when it is struggling to tackle agitations by the Maratha community for a quota. But political analysts believe that the resignations could be considered a blessing in disguise for the dispensation, bringing some near-term benefits.
For starters, the members of the present-day Maharashtra State Backward Classes Commission were appointed by the Uddhav Thackeray-led Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government in 2021.
The MVA government comprised the undivided Shiv Sena, the undivided Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), and the Congress. According to political observers, the resignations will now allow the Shinde government to replace the MVA-appointed members with members of its choice.
Significantly, Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis has even made allegations of there being political motivations behind the resignations.
“The state government was not very happy with the functioning of the commission,” Abhay Deshpande, political commentator, told ThePrint. “The government’s short-term goal is to create a Maratha quota as soon as possible so that it can appear to make good on its promise of granting reservation to Marathas without touching the existing reservations of any other community.”
But this work isn’t proceeding as desired because of internal differences, Deshpande said. “With its own nominees, the state government can drive the commission’s work faster,” he said.
The Maharashtra State Backward Classes Commission is a nine-member independent, quasi-judicial body that decides on the inclusion and exclusion of castes into categories such as Vimukta Jati and Nomadic Tribes (VJNT), Other Backward Classes (OBCs), and Special Backward Classes.
This month, at least two members — Laxman Hake and Balaji Killarikar — resigned citing interference by the government. Following their resignations, the commission’s chairman Anand Nirgude, a retired Bombay High Court judge, also resigned but did not specify any reason.
He later told ThePrint that he did not wish to comment.
The resignations come at a time when the Maharashtra government had asked the commission to determine parameters and conduct a survey to ascertain the social and economic backwardness of the Maratha community.
The Marathas comprise about 33 percent of the state’s population and have been sporadically protesting for reservation in government jobs and education. The most recent wave of protests started in August-September this year when Maratha leader Manoj Jarange Patil sat on an indefinite hunger strike.
He has now given a deadline of 24 December to the state government to grant the Maratha community reservation, if not through a separate quota, then as Kunbis under the Other Backward Classes category (OBCs).
Maratha leaders and historians claim that all Marathas have their roots in the agrarian Kunbi clan, which gets reservation benefits in the OBC quota. This has, however, angered the state’s OBCs.
A separate quota for Marathas is embroiled in a legal battle with the Supreme Court having struck it down as unconstitutional in 2021. The state government’s review petition was rejected in April this year, after which it filed a curative petition to get the Supreme Court to reconsider its decision.
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The writing on the wall
There were clear murmurs of dissent within the commission before its members resigned but the Shinde government did not try to remedy the situation. If anything, the government hastened the resignations with show-causes notices to at least three members, two of whom ended up resigning.
The show-cause notices were all based on “flimsy reasons” associated with the engagements of the members outside of the commission, both Hake and Killarikar told ThePrint without elaborating on the reasons cited in the notice.
There were no attempts by the government to call the disgruntled members for a reconciliation and the resignations were accepted without much protest, the members said.
The state government has already replaced the chairman and the members with new nominees — Justice (Retd) Sunil Shukre, who was part of the delegation that persuaded Jarange Patil to break his fast, has been appointed as chairman, and Om Prakash Jadhav, Maruti Shingare, and Machhindranath Tambe as members.
After the furore over the resignations, Maharashtra’s excise minister Shambhuraj told the state assembly that neither Nirgude nor any other member “has anywhere said that they were under pressure to step down”.
“I will seek detailed information about it. The information will be tabled before the House,” he told the House Tuesday.
Speaking to reporters at the Vidhan Bhavan premises in Nagpur, Deputy CM Fadnavis said the MVA filled the backward class commission with its own party members. He also claimed that Killarikar had met Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Sharad Pawar.
Killarikar is a practising advocate at the Aurangabad bench of the Bombay High Court, while Hake is an OBC activist and a member of the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) faction.
Political commentator Hemant Desai told ThePrint that the Maratha quota will be a major factor in next year’s general and Maharashtra assembly polls.
“Eknath Shinde wants to take this issue to a stage where the Maratha community will be satisfied. Whether the reservation stands (or not), all of that can be dealt with after the election (sic),” he said, adding that handling the Maratha quota issue right will cement Shinde’s position as a Maratha leader and improve his bargaining power within the three-party coalition of the Shinde-led Shiv Sena, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and the Ajit Pawar-led faction of the NCP.
Marathas vs OBCs
There has been a divide between Marathas and OBCs in Maharashtra ever since the Shinde government accepted Jarange Patil’s demand of giving Kunbi caste certificates to Maratha families with documents showing Kunbi lineage. The rift has also found its way into the government, with minister Chhagan Bhujbal siding with the OBCs to criticise his own government.
Sources from all three ruling parties agree that having a separate quota for Marathas by fighting a court battle to show exceptional circumstances to breach the 50 percent quota cap mandated by the Supreme Court is the only way for the state government to keep both communities happy. While the process of giving Kunbi certificates to eligible Marathas is underway, politicians from all three parties say the priority is to pursue a separate quota for Marathas.
Hake and Killarikar both told ThePrint that they had several differences with other members of the commission and the state government over the issue before they resigned. To begin with, they wanted an all-caste socioeconomic survey in Maharashtra to have data for all communities, and be able to ascertain the social and economic backwardness of Marathas on comparative grounds.
The government, however, was interested in a limited survey of the Marathas, they told ThePrint.
In a letter he wrote to the commission on 13 November, Chief Minister Shinde had shared Terms of Reference that said 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, collect fresh quantifiable data and also scrutinise the one collected in the past.
The dissenting members also had issues with suggestions of determining fresh criteria or parameters to ascertain the social and economic backwardness of Marathas, saying it would be “discriminatory.”
Political analyst Deshpande, quoted earlier, feels “there must be pressure” on the members who resigned.
“Not just from the government, but also with everything that’s happening in society with there being a conflict between the OBCs and Marathas on the reservation issue. All the members who resigned are non-Marathas,” he told ThePrint, adding that any report by them could have been seen through this lens.
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)