After Maharashtra, Jat Bodies' Demand for Reservation Creates Trouble for BJP

New Delhi: Already facing a difficult political situation in Maharashtra with Marathas intensifying their demand for reservation, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party could face a fresh challenge in North Indian states in the form of a renewed stir by the dominant Jat community for inclusion in the Union government’s Other Backward Classes (OBC) list.

On September 24, several Jat community and farmer leaders gathered in Uttar Pradesh’s Meerut district to discuss the issue of OBC reservation. The Akhil Bharatiya Jat Mahasabha, which organised the discussion as part of its state-level executive meeting, announced that they would hold a bigger gathering of Jats to push for OBC reservation, in New Delhi on November 20. The re-ignition of the long-standing Jat reservation demand ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha election and state elections in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh this year could pose new questions to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his team.

The BJP is already faced with the prospects of dealing with the problems of caste census, implementing sub-categorisation of 27% quota based on the findings of the Rohini Commission, Maratha reservation and the Opposition’s aggressive stance on the exclusion of defined quotas for OBC women within the 33% women’s reservation in the Lok Sabha and state assemblies. Jats, a traditionally landed, agrarian community, are found in Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, National Capital Territory of Delhi, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. They are electorally significant and politically organised in Haryana, western UP, NCT Delhi and Rajasthan. Protests for Jat reservation have turned violent in the past, especially in Haryana, which borders the national capital.

Also read: Explainer: Why the Maratha Quota Agitation Has Put Successive Maharashtra Governments in a Bind

Naresh Tikait, president of the Bharatiya Kisan Union, who was one of the speakers at Sunday’s event in Meerut, said reservation was a “right” of the Jats. “They have made immense contributions in the country’s development and independence movement. This baradari has also contributed a lot in sports as well as politics,” said Tikait.

Jat groups do not agree with the Supreme Court’s decision in 2015 to strike down a last-ditch notification by the Congress-led UPA government in 2014 ahead of the Lok Sabha election to grant OBC status to the Jat community at the central level. The Jats already enjoy OBC reservation at the state-level in states such as Rajasthan, UP, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Bihar. Jats of Gujarat and Rajasthan (excluding Bharatpur and Dholpur districts) are in the Central List of OBCs.

The apex court, while striking down the Jat reservation, had said “the perception of a self-proclaimed socially backward class of citizens or even the perception of the ‘advanced classes’ as to the social status of the ‘less fortunates’ cannot continue to be a constitutionally permissible yardstick for determination of backwardness”.

Chaudhary Yudhvir Singh, national general secretary of Akhil Bharatiya Jat Mahasabha, however, does not agree with the court’s decision. “The communities parallel to us and those even below us in the qualifying criteria were included in the OBC list as part of a political conspiracy. We deserve reservation. We qualify on the indicators of the Mandal Commission,” said Singh.

The Akhil Bharatiya Jat Mahasabha meeting in Meerut on September 24. Photo: Special arrangement

More than eight years after the apex court quashed the UPA government’s notification, Singh feels the Modi-led BJP government has done little to grant reservation to the community even though it has enjoyed back-to-back majorities and even cornered the Jat vote, especially in the aftermath of the 2012 Muzaffarnagar communal violence.

“It does not look like the government intends to give us reservation. They are pursuing the politics of non-Jat communities,” Singh told The Wire. “They used Jats in 2013 (Muzaffarnagar violence) and captured power in the country. In Haryana, they installed a non-Jat chief minister (Manohar Lal Khattar) to pit Jats vs non-Jats.”

In the Meerut gathering, attending by several heads of Jat khaps, Singh said it was a myth that the community was affluent. “There are affluent and poor people in every baradari. We are not demanding quota for every Jat, only for those below the creamy layer of the OBC,” he said.

The demand for Jat reservation in Central jobs and admission in centrally-run educational institutes is more than two decades old. In March 2014, the UPA government in its last cabinet meeting approved OBC reservation for the Jats, rejecting the advice tendered to it by the National Commission for Backward Classes (NCBC) which had stated that community did not fulfil the criteria for inclusion in the Central List of OBCs. The NCBC had observed that merely belonging to an agricultural community could not confer backward status on the Jats, which it concluded were neither socially nor educationally backward and were adequately represented in armed forces, government services and educational institutions.

Also read: EWS Quota: Why Poverty Alone Can’t Be a Basis for Reservation

The UPA government, in its attempt to win over the community, ignored the NCBC’s advice by saying that it did “not adequately take into account the ground realities”. Through a notification in March 2014, it granted OBC reservation to Jats in Bihar, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, NCT of Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Rajasthan’s Bharatpur and Dholpur districts. The notification was challenged in the apex court, which struck it down, observing that the view taken by the NCBC was “adequately supported by good and acceptable reasons”.

The “inclusion of the politically organized classes (such as Jats) in the list of backward classes mainly, if not solely, on the basis that on same parameters other groups who have fared better have been so included cannot be affirmed”, ruled the Supreme Court.

At the Meerut meeting, Singh also appealed Jats to keep their youth away from the slogans of “Jai Shri Ram” and instead stick to using “Ram Ram” while greeting each other as per their culture. “Jai Shri Ram is the language of a motivated party worker. Ram Ram is our culture. Jai Shri Ram is spread by the RSS as part of its agenda to create enmity in the society,” said Singh. “We have been using Ram Ram since birth…at every event, in weddings, while greeting passersby. Is there a bigger Ram bhakt than us? Today, they are asking us for certificates of Hindu [religion].”

Singh was perhaps alluding to the penetration of the BJP into the Jat regions over the last decade and the dismantling of the age-old Jat traditions of opposing Brahmanical supremacy and embracing the RSS’s view of Hindu unity. The BJP’s success in western UP, in particular in the Jat belt, in the 2014, 2017 and 2019 elections has prevented the Opposition from reclaiming their narrative. Before the 2017, 2019 and 2022 elections, the BJP top leadership held several meetings with Jat leaders and elders to reach out to the community electorally in UP, and keep them away from the Rashtriya Lok Dal, which had been their traditional political party for decades before the Muzaffarnagar riots ruptured old social coalitions in the region. Jat leaders said the BJP led by Amit Shah even promised to expedite their demand of reservation once voted to power.

“I differentiated between Jai Shri Ram and Ram Ram to show that Jats are not communal. That Jats are secular. No one uses Ram Ram more than us. It is our culture. It indicates harmony. We want to save our youth from this aggressive chant (Jai Shri Ram),” he told The Wire.

With well over a month left for the New Delhi meeting in November, Jat groups are mobilising a strategy to make their reservation an election issue. Jats from across the country will be in attendance on November 20.

“For more than nine years they have made fools out of us. If we do not get the reservation before the 2024 Lok Sabha election, we will protest at every booth level,” said Shera Jat, UP organisation secretary of the youth wing of the Akhil Bharatiya Jat Mahasabha.