The recent Supreme Court order quashing quota in promotion for Schedule Castes in state services has let the genie of reservation out of the bottle again, forcing political parties to recast their electoral strategies.
The apex court said reservations and quota in promotion were not a fundamental right and the state governments were not bound to provide reservation in promotions in public services.
Caste based political parties like Bahujan Samaj Party and Bhim Army were quick to target the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Central government, accusing them of being anti-Dalit. Bhim Army and other Dalit organisations have already given a call for Bharat Bandh on February 23. A similar bandh call by Dalit organisation in April 2018 in protest against the Supreme Court judgement diluting the stringent provisions of the Prevention of Atrocities against Schedule Castes Act had led to large-scale violence in UP, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and many other places in north India.
The Samajwadi Party has charged the ruling BJP government at the Centre with conspiring against Dalits, BSP chief Mayawati has asked the Union government to take positive corrective steps as her party does not agree with the Supreme Court ruling.
Asking the Centre to come clear over the issue soon, Mayawati said, “We demand from the Centre not to keep the matter hanging like the Congress did,” she said.
Calling the ruling unfortunate, BJP ally Apna Dal (Sonelal) national president Anupriya Patel said that the main reason for the recent move against reservation was the absence of SC/ST representation in judiciary.
Though the BJP governments, both at the Centre and in Uttar Pradesh, have been trying to allay the fears, the Congress has attacked the Narendra Modi government, accusing the BJP and its ideological mentor Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh of conspiring to end reservation.
For the Yogi Adityanath government, the apex court judgement has added to its woes as it is facing flak for delay in granting quota within the 27 per cent OBC reservation for the most backward classes (MBCs).
The MBCs are demanding separate quota for them within 27 per cent reservation for the Other Backward Classes as the dominant OBC castes Yadav and Kurmi have pocketed the lion’s share of the reservation benefits. The Yogi Adityanath government had set up a committee in 2017 which submitted its report in May 2018.
Suheldeo Bhartiya Samaj Party, a former ally of the BJP, is accusing the ruling party of ignoring the interests of the MBCs. The UP government has, however, promised that another committee to examine the report of the previous committee would soon be constituted and a final decision on quota within quota would be taken within the next few months.,
The quota for SCs, OBCs is a sensitive issue in the Hindi heartland where caste-based political parties have enjoyed considerable clout in electoral politics for the last several decades. The SCs and STs, who account for around 22 per cent of the population in UP, have been playing a significant role in electoral politics.
Both the SP and the BSP have reason to worry as their vote share since the 2014 Lok Sabha elections has eroded considerably. In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, despite having joined hands to secure their respective clout, the vote share of SP-BSP combine came down to a little over 37 per cent from 42 per cent in 2014. It was due to the shifting of non Jatav SCs and non-Yadav OBCs towards the BJP. The vote share of the BJP went up to over 49 per cent in 2019 from a little over 42 per cent in 2014.
Political pundits have attributed this rise in BJP vote share to the mobilisation of non-Yadav backwards and non-Jatav Dalits. In fact, the power struggles in UP and the resulting shifts can be traced to the manner in which the SP and the BSP have treated the backwards and Dalits in the name of social engineering.