Mumbai: The Bombay high court on Thursday told the Maharashtra government that it was free to decide on referring the case of Maratha reservations to the Maharashtra Commission for Backward Classes.
At Tuesday’s hearing, the government had stated it had no objection to the data already on the court record regarding Maratha quota being made available to the Commission. The HC had asked the state to make its stand clear. On Thursday, the HC said the state did not need its permission to make a reference to the Commission.
The original petitioners in the case who have challenged the quota for Marathas have opposed referring the matter to the commission on the grounds that its chairman and retired judge Sambhaj Mhase had publicly supported reservation for Marathas. For a state government to institutionalize quota for a particular caste or community, one of the basic legal requirements is that its Commission for Backward Classes has to make that recommendation on the basis of strong evidence.
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A state government official, who has worked on the legal case, said requesting anonymity that “the matter may take a long time to see a legal settlement”. “The option to refer the case to the commission is time-consuming because even if the commission recommends quota, the case may go back to the HC as the commission’s recommendations are open to legal challenge,” the official said.
The Bombay HC is hearing a bunch of petitions for and against the 16% quota in government-run and aided educational institutes and government jobs for the Maratha community. In September 2014, the then Congress-Nationalist Congress Party government had issued an ordinance giving 16% quota to Marathas and 5% to Muslims. The Congress-NCP government relied on the report by a committee led by senior Congress leader Narayan Rane, which recommended quota for the Marathas. At least two social activists and one non-government organization challenged the ordinance in the Bombay HC pointing out flaws in the Rane committee report, and the court stayed the ordinance in November 2014. A month earlier, in October 2014, the Congress and NCP were defeated in the Maharashtra assembly polls. The Bharatiya Janata Party-led government that came to power passed a law in December 2014 giving quota to the Marathas but dropped the provision for Muslims. This law was also challenged in the HC which again stayed the Act in April 2015.
Since then, the Devendra Fadnavis government, which has taken a stand in favour of the Maratha quota, has been exploring a number of legal and constitutional options to build a fool-proof case for the Maratha reservation without tinkering with the existing quota for scheduled castes, scheduled tribes, other backward classes, and other smaller social groups which all add up to 52%.
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While the legal case dragged on, the Maratha community in Maharashtra, estimated to be around 32-35% of the state’s total population, rose in quiet rage in August 2016 to protest against the rape and murder of a teenage Maratha girl in Kopardi village of Ahmednagar district. The three accused who have been charge-sheeted in this case belong to a Dalit caste and the case is being heard in a fast track court at Ahmednagar.
In August, the Marathas, under the banner of Sakal Maratha Samaj, launched an unprecedented protest by organizing massive silent marches in Marathwada, Western Maharashtra, and South Central Maharashtra. In addition to the demand for death penalty to the Kopardi culprits, the Marathas also demanded quota and amendments to the SC and ST (Prevention of Atrocities Act) 1989 which they alleged was being misused to frame them in false cases.
Without any apparent support from any of the mainstream political parties, the Marathas organized around 40 ‘Maratha Kranti Morchas’ (Maratha revolutionary marches) with most of them boasting a turnout of 100,000 people between August 2016 and December 2016. The protests, however, started fizzling out around late November, particularly after demonetization of high-currency notes as the Maratha organisers faced problems in mobilizing support.