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A secret formula

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A secret formula

How Congress intends to keep its promise of a quota for Patidars is a mystery

That the Congress is putting up a semblance of a coherent electoral fight for the Gujarat Assembly poll instead of rolling over as it has done in the past is commendable. Forging a new caste coalition, doffing its cap, metaphorically speaking, to religiosity and upping its social media traction are all valid poll strategies. But in trying to convince the Patidar voters of Gujarat that reservations for the community are on the anvil if by some fluke and upsetting all forecasts they are in a position to form the Government in the State, the Congress is being wilfully blind and its new-found ally, the Hardik Patel-led Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti (PAAS) conveniently deaf. For, the Supreme Court mandated 50 per cent limit to on quotas cannot be breached, unless there is a Constitutional amendment, and is likely to be struck down by the courts as have other such moves by various States including Andhra Pradesh (though the State's appeal in the Supreme Court is pending). Both Congress and PAAS have confirmed that the former's quota formula which the latter has accepted does not envisage tinkering with the extant quotas of 49 per cent already provided for SC/ST/OBC in Gujarat or carving out a Patidar quota from it, leaving them no option but to cross the 50 per cent quota ceiling if Patidars and “other unreserved communities” are to be granted reservations.

Some Congress spokespersons have tried to spin the deal as a “symbolic” one which shows the “intent” of the Congress to take on board the concerns of Patidars whose members cut across the farming community, the mercantile class and urban professionals and so, in Congress speak, have become symbols of the “overall disenchantment with the BJP regime” in Gujarat. The truth, as always, is more prosaic. Given the hard, anti-BJP line taken by Hardik Patel over the past months as he led the Patidar agitation for quotas and the fact that Gujarat is a two-party State where even a leader as formidable as Keshubhai Patel failed to make much of a dent fighting as a “third force”, his options to stay politically relevant were severely limited. Against this backdrop, if the BJP, as looks likely, wins, his irrelevance will be an accomplished fact so he had no choice but to ally with the Congress even if it has only an outside chance at winning the election. His climbdown from the original demand of the agitators that a Patidar quota be carved from the existing OBC reservations is also reflective of this assessment as his swallowing whole, at least in public, the Congress' ‘secret formula' for Patidar reservations without meddling with the current quota spread in Gujarat. The Congress, in that sense, has Patel where it wants him as its secret is safe with him!
 
 
 
 
 
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