 "BJP offers quota for extremely backward within OBC reservation")
Amit Shah on Saturday announced an alliance with the Suheldeo Bharatiya Samaj Party. This comes on the heels of Apna Dal Lok Sabha member Anupriya Patel being included in the Union council of ministers and Keshav Prasad Maurya made the BJP Uttar Pradesh unit chief. Patel is a Kurmi and Maurya a Kushwaha — both being important non-Yadav OBC castes of eastern UP. The Suheldeo Bharatiya Samaj Party represents Rajbhar caste comprising primarily masons. It’s an important non-Yadav caste with significant presence in eastern UP.
Eastern UP has for the past two decades been a weak area for the BJP. The party has only 13 legislators from eastern UP’s 102 Assembly seats, although it swept the 2014 Lok Sabha in the region on the back of Narendra Modi contesting from Varanasi and alliance with the Apna Dal. The UP Assembly has 403 seats.
The BJP believes the key to success in eastern UP is to isolate Yadav and Muslim support base of the Samajwadi Party and consolidate all other castes in its favour.
To woo non-Yadav OBCs, the BJP’s trump card is going to be the ‘Karpoori Thakur formula’. It means a quota or quotas within a larger quota. The Narendra Modi government is mulling a proposal to introduce a two- or three-layered category in the OBC reservation of 27 per cent in government jobs and educational institutions. It is also likely to recommend increase of the current annual income ceiling for the creamy layer in the category from Rs 6 lakh to 8.5 lakh.
The government has asked the National Commission for Backward Classes to revive an old proposal to trifurcate the OBC quota into three categories – extremely backward classes or EBCs; most backward classes or MBCs; and OBCs. Caste groups in each category will be eligible for a nine per cent quota each from the consolidated 27 per cent.
According to sources, there is enough empirical as well as anecdotal evidence that the OBC quota has been monopolised by dominant caste groups within the category ever since it was implemented in 1993. In the context of Uttar Pradesh, the Yadavs, given their relative prosperity and access to education, have benefited from the reservations while EBCs and MBCs have lagged.
This is in contrast to the neighbouring Bihar, where the then chief minister Karpoori Thakur made two separate list within the OBCs, helping the Yadavs and Kurmis, thanks to their numerical strength, benefit and find greater political representation. This is true for Tamil Nadu as well, which has separate lists within the OBC category.
In 2010, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar introduced a similar formula within the 15.5 per cent reservation for the dalits by distinguishing between the ‘mahadalits’ and dalits. The list identified the Paswans as dalits, which due to their relative affluence, were managing to get most benefits.
However, any such sub-categorisation at the Centre in the OBC list would require a fresh survey of which among the OBCs are extremely backward and most backward, as also parameters to judge whether certain castes have monopolised the benefits from the reservation policy.
But, such concerns are not stopping the BJP in making it a Yadav versus non-Yadav issue in the UP.
Shah and BJP leaders have already identified Yadavs as perpetrators of lawlessness in Uttar Pradesh. They, along with Muslims, or so the BJP’s argument goes, have a hegemony over the current Akhilesh Yadav-led government and dominate other castes, particularly the extremely backward and dalits.
During Saturday’s public rally at Mau in Uttar Pradesh, Shah also remembered Suheldeo as the protector of Hindu religion and enemy of ‘foreign invaders’.
Suheldeo is an 11th century king from the Rajbhar community and Shah has taken to marking his anniversary every year in March and invoking him in his speeches.
At one such event in 2015, Shah had said: “Today is the beginning of bringing the backward castes and others under a single umbrella. This is needed because despite reservation policy, only one caste (a hint at the Yadavs) has monopolised all the benefits.”
Prime Minister Modi will be in Gorakhpur to lay the foundation stone for All India Institute of Medical Sciences on July 22, while Shah has visited the region twice in the past week. The OBCs account for 54 per cent of UP’s population. Among the OBCs, Yadavs are numerically the strongest caste. Last week, the PM increased the representation of non-Yadav OBCs as well as those from eastern UP in the council of ministers. Meanwhile, EBC leaders such as Swami Prasad Maurya have deserted Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati in recent weeks and they could join the BJP.