Marathas and Dhangars are running parallel campaigns for reservation. Neither the ruling nor the Opposition alliances are fully for or against either of the demands.
Published Oct 31, 2024 | 3:00 AM ⚊ Updated Oct 31, 2024 | 3:00 AM
Political parties are neither accepting nor rejecting the demands.
Maharashtra is in a unique fix with caste-based reservation demands. The state has so far witnessed countless silent and violent marches, dramatic hunger strikes, and sit-ins, and the deputy speaker of the Assembly jumping out of a window in the state Secretariat in protest.
Two prominent communities, the Marathas and the Dhangars — influential in more than 100 out of 288 Assembly seats — are running parallel campaigns for reservation. Neither the ruling nor the Opposition alliances are fully for or against either of the demands.
The Assembly polls are just three weeks away.
Historically, the Maratha community has been a ruling, martial caste. Marathas own 75 percent of the cultivated land in the state, control more than half the educational institutions, around 70 percent of the cooperative bodies, and operate 86 out of the 105 sugar factories.
The community is politically dominant as well, with 16 of the state’s 20 chief ministers to date being Maratha.
And yet, the intra-caste disparity is huge. According to the Justice MG Gaikwad commission report of 2018, 93 percent of the Marathas have an annual income of less than ₹1 lakh. Around 37 percent are below the poverty line.
Among landowners, 71 percent hold less than 2.5 acres each. About 14 percent of the Marathas are illiterate. The community, which heavily influences about 70 Assembly seats, is now demanding reservation.
The Gaikwad Commission had recommended a reservation of 16 percent for the Marathas, which the then government had implemented. The government decision was contested in the apex court, which struck it down since it breached the 50 percent reservation ceiling.
In February this year, the Eknath Shinde government again passed a bill, granting the community 10 percent reservation. The matter is now pending in the Supreme Court.
To circumvent the legal dispute, Maratha activist Manoj Jarange Patil has been lobbying for the community to be granted reservation under the 27 percent share of the Other Backward Classes (OBC) category. All Marathas, he said, should be counted as ‘Kunbis’ – a sub-caste already part of the OBCs – making reservation automatic.
This, of course, does not sit well with the 139 castes under OBC in Maharashtra, who are worried that the Marathas, who account for 28 percent of the state’s population, may eat into their share.
Political parties, while not overtly against Maratha reservation, have been reluctant to support Patil’s cause, to not alienate the OBC communities.
The Opposition Maha-Vikas Aghadi (MVA) alliance has been using the issue to corner the ruling Mahayuti alliance, saying the BJP is anti-Maratha, and is using legal hold-ups as an excuse. The former, however, has not yet openly declared its support for including Marathas under the OBC banner.
The Mahayuti, on the other hand, has lobbed the ball to the courts and the Central government, saying the 50 percent reservation ceiling must be removed. The BJP’s perception as an anti-Maratha party had cost the saffron party dearly in the general elections earlier this year, with the NDA losing all eight seats in the community’s stronghold Marathwada.
To smooth the ruffled feathers of the OBC communities, the state Cabinet had recommended increasing the non-creamy layer limit from ₹8 lakh to ₹15 lakh. In early October, the National Backward Class Commission approved the inclusion of 19 castes under the OBC category, which may give the ruling alliance yet another edge in the upcoming polls.
The fate of the Dhangar community may rest on a British-era spelling confusion.
The nomadic tribe, which makes up about 10 percent of Maharashtra’s population, is counted as one of the castes under the OBC category and gets a 3.5 percent reservation.
The Dhangars want to be included under the Scheduled Tribes, as they claim that they are the same as the existing ‘Dhangads’ in the STs, and their exclusion is a typographical error. This would increase their reservation to 7 percent. The community influences 30-35 seats in northern and eastern Maharashtra.
The resurgence of the decades-old demand has raised hackles in the STs, who believe the Dhangar inclusion will negatively impact their share among the 47 tribes in the category.
Earlier in October, Deputy Speaker Narhari Zirwal, along with several MLAs of the ST communities, jumped off the third floor of the state secretariat into safety nets strung to prevent suicide attempts along the building in protest of the demand. About 25 Assembly seats are reserved for the ST category.
Among the Mahayuti alliance, the MLAs of the Ajit Pawar-led NCP faction are against the reservation. Another ally, the Rashtriya Samaj Paksha, however, is firmly pro-Dhangar.
The Dhangar community has traditionally been a BJP bastion, with the saffron party having cultivated leaders from the tribe, along with the Mali and Vanjari communities – as a rival front to the Congress’s traditional vote bank of Marath, Dalit, and Muslim communities.
While the MVA looks to benefit from the cracks within the ruling side, the Opposition alliance has yet to openly choose a side.
Maharashtra Congress president Nana Patole called the unfulfilled demand “yet another example of the BJP’s unkept promises”. The Shiv Sena (UBT) is attempting to balance both sides, saying it would find a middle ground if it came to power.
The Sharad Pawar faction of the NCP would be looking to consolidate the Dhangar vote as well, given that they make up an influential percentage of the party’s home turf, Baramati.
With fractures on both sides of the political coin, the reservation road might be rocky for the Marathas and Dhangars. The upcoming elections will likely serve as a crucial referendum on how these caste equations will reshape Maharashtra’s socio-political landscape.
(Mrunmayee Kulkarni is a Bengaluru-based political journalist. She also covers civic issues and industrial policies for EVs and MSMEs. Views are personal. Edited by Majnu Babu).
