With pressure mounting on the Eknath Shinde-led government over the Maratha reservation issue, it has asked the State Backward Class Commission to undertake a new exercise to collect empirical data to check social and educational backwardness of Marathas.
The state government on Tuesday issued a government resolution that has announced the commission will undertake the new exercise of collecting empirical data to be used in the Supreme Court.
A committee of three retired justices — Dilip Bhosle, Maroti Gaikwad and Sandeep Shinde — will be formed, which will assist the state government on extending reservation as well as to fight the ongoing curative petition in the Supreme Court.
The Shinde committee has recommended evidence from 12 departments to be considered acceptable to ensure Kunbi (OBC) certificate to Marathas.
The state has directed the revenue department to initiate immediate action based on this.
Based on this, the state government has directed the social justice department to bring an amendment in to the Maharashtra Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, De-notified Tribes, Nomadic Tribes, Other Backward Classes and Special Backward Category (Regulation of Issuance and Verification of Caste Certificate), 2012.
The Act is meant to regulate issuance of caste certificates. The Shinde committee report said that it has checked over 1.74 crore records from districts in the Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar division and found 13,498 Kunbi records.
The Tuesday’s decision comes almost a decade after a committee led by the then Congress minister Narayan Rane collected empirical data on backwardness of Marathas.
It was based on the Narayan Rane report that the erstwhile Congress-Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) government announced a 16 per cent quota for the community in the run-up to the 2014 Assembly elections.
But the Bombay High Court stayed this decision. After a change of guard in the government, the Devendra Fadnavis-led BJP-Shiv Sena government went to the Supreme Court in November 2014 to appeal against the high court order but the top court refused to vacate the stay.
In June 2017, the Fadnavis government constituted the Maharashtra State Backward Class Commission headed by Justice (retired) MG Gaikwad to study the social, financial and educational status of the Maratha community.
The commission submitted its report in November 2018, classifying Marathas as a socially and educationally backward class (SEBC).
The same month, the Maharashtra Assembly unanimously passed a Bill proposing a 16 per cent reservation in education and government jobs for Marathas.
The Bombay High Court upheld the constitutional validity of the reservation law but reduced the quota to 12 per cent in education and 13 per cent in jobs.
In the Supreme Court, the matter was referred to a five-member Constitution bench, which unanimously agreed that there was no need to revisit the 1992 Indira Sawhney judgment that had fixed the total reservation limit at 50 per cent and unanimously struck down the state law. State government has filed a curative petition in the apex court.
