The Bombay High Court on Friday questioned the need to create a separate category for the Maratha community.
A Division Bench of Justices Ranjit More and Bharati Dangre was hearing a bunch of petitions for and against the 16% reservation in jobs and education for Marathas, since the beginning of the month.
When senior counsel V.A. Thorat representing the Maharashtra government was arguing before the bench for the third consecutive day, justifying the reservation.
Taking a cue from the arguments made before and relying on the findings by the Maharashtra Backward Class Commission report, the court asked, “If according to the government, the Socially and Educationally Backward Class (SEBC) and Other Backward Class (OBC) are the same then what was the need to create a separate class?”
The court said, “The government could have just included the Marathas in the OBC category and granted them 16% reservation. Why the segregation?”
On this, Mr. Thorat reiterated his previous arguments that the State only wants to give the Maratha community reservation in State jobs and educational institutes and not politically.
He said, “Had the government included the Maratha community in the OBC category, then they would have also got full reservation, including political. The State did not want this... The reservation is not political and does not allot any seats in the panchayat, taluka or in any other polls.”
He also went on to repeat the powers bestowed upon the State under the Indian Constitution to come up with the reservation for a specific community and said, “State has the power to issue its own list of communities which it deems to be backward and in need of reservation.”
On Thursday, the court had asked the Maharashtra government what prompted the Maratha community to agitate for reservation only recently.