Centre should take initiative to lift 50% quota ceiling: Maharashtra CM Uddhav Thackeray

MUMBAI: The Centre should lift the 50 per cent cap on reservations to ensure that the Maratha quota is restored, Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray said on Sunday.

Without such relaxation, permitting states to prepare their list of OBCs (Other Backward Classes) and providing reservations will not help, he said while addressing people of the state in a live webcast.

"When I met prime minister Narendra Modi in Delhi (in June), I told him that since the Supreme Court has quashed the Maratha quota and ruled that states had no right to provide reservations, the Central government should take the initiative (to relax the 50% reservation ceiling). Now that the Centre has given the right (to prepare OBC lists) to states, it should relax the 50 per cent cap (on reservations). I hope the prime minister would do so," he said.

Thackeray said the empirical OBC data and amending the NDRF norms were the two other demands he raised with the PM.

"My government is committed to finding permanent solutions to flooding, cyclones and landslides which have become a permanent feature triggering floods and causing loss to life and property," he added.

The Union Cabinet is learnt to have cleared a Constitution amendment bill that seeks to give power to states and UTs to make their own OBC lists.

The bill will now be introduced in Parliament for passage, sources said in Delhi on Wednesday.

The Supreme Court had dismissed the Centre's plea seeking review of the May 5 majority verdict which held that the 102nd constitution amendment took away the states' powers to declare socially and educationally backward classes (SEBC) for grant of quota in jobs and admissions.

The Maharashtra government had granted reservation to the Marathas in jobs and education under the SEBC category.

On May 5, a five-judge Constitution bench of the Supreme Court had unanimously set aside the quota for Marathas and refused to refer the 1992 Mandal verdict putting a cap of 50 per cent on reservations to a larger bench.