The escalating violence in the ongoing agitation demanding reservation for the Maratha community is proving to be a big challenge for the Maharashtra government. The raging quota stir has once again brought into focus the need for a comprehensive caste census to ensure social justice by fine-tuning the affirmative action programmes in tune with the level of backwardness of various communities. Given the harsh social realities, it would be prudent to have robust caste data as it will be useful to establish statistical justification for reservation. It is also a legal imperative because the courts want quantifiable data to support the existing levels of reservation. The caste-wise data would put to rest the unreasonable demands for inclusion in the OBC lists.
In Maharashtra, the Maratha reservation issue has become a weapon in the hands of the political parties to score brownie points against each other. As the agitators have been targeting public properties and attacking the houses of MLAs, leading to the imposition of curfew in Dharashiv district, the Eknath Shinde government is facing the heat from the opposition combine. The Marathas, a politically dominant community accounting for one-third of the population, have been staging protests in different parts of the state, seeking reservation in government jobs and education under the OBC category. All major parties in the state have sought to garner political mileage out of the agitation at various stages. The previous Devendra Fadnavis-led BJP government had approved the OBC quota for Marathas after violent protests rocked the state in 2017-’18. Based on the findings of the Backward Class Commission, it gave its nod for reservation to Marathas under a special provision – the Socially and Educationally Backward Class Act. The reservation policy gave the BJP a political edge over the then rival Congress-NCP. Now the issue is coming back to haunt the BJP-Shiv Sena (Shinde faction) coalition government.