The Modi government has made a wily political move by deciding to set up a commission for having a relook at the reservation system in the country and having a reservation-within-reservation arrangement with regard to the Other Backward Castes (OBCs), which have been the pocket boroughs of regional satraps for close to three decades.

The move is essentially aimed at the next general elections due in April 2019 but likely to be advanced by six to eight months. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is acutely aware of the fact that major political parties, led by the Congress, would move heaven and earth to form a united front as much as possible at the national level despite the knockout blow to Opposition unity delivered by Bihar chief minister and Janata Dal (United) leader Nitish Kumar.

The proposed commission will deliver its report within 12 weeks after it is set up and share its recommendations on sub-categorisation within the OBCs for even distribution of reservation benefit. A decision to this effect was taken by the Union Cabinet on August 23.

The short timeline of just 12 weeks given to the panel to come up with its recommendations conveys the Modi government’s urgency and its keenness to advance the general elections. But before we try to decide the political implications of the move, it will be in order to quickly have a broad-brush picture of what the proposed panel is going to do.

The BJP wants to replicate its UP success at the national level in the next general elections. Photo: Reuters

A government press release said the panel will examine the “extent of inequitable distribution of benefits of reservation among the castes and communities included in the broad category of OBCs, with reference to the OBCs included in the Central list”. The proposed commission would also work out the mechanism, criteria, norms and parametres in a scientific way for sub-categorisation and will also undertake an exercise to identify the respective castes, communities and sub-castes in the central list of OBCs and classify them.

Simultaneously, the Union Cabinet also raised the income limit defining "creamy layer" for OBC reservation by Rs 2 lakh per annum, the fourth such revision of the creamy layer bar. It was fixed at Rs one lakh in 1993 and hiked to Rs 2.5 lakh in 2004 and then to Rs 4.5 lakh in 2008. The present ceiling of Rs six lakh came into being in 2013. Let us come to the political aspect of this move, which is essentially aimed at rewriting Mandal politics. The move will adversely impact major regional political parties such as Samajwadi Party (SP) and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in Uttar Pradesh and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) in Bihar, apart from causing major repercussions in southern India, particularly in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.

What the BJP government is trying to do is to formalise the kind of social engineering it had done in the UP elections in early 2017. At the time, BJP president Amit Shah carefully lured neglected segments of the OBCs away from the SP and the BSP by giving tickets to more than 40 per cent non-Yadav candidates. These extremely backward OBCs had been reeling under the numerical and political dominance of certain communities that have traditionally garnered the benefits of reservation.

By empowering the more backward communities within the OBCs, the BJP wants to replicate its UP success at the national level in the next general elections.

If the BJP is able to walk away with this major chunk of the OBC voters in the general elections, regional satraps like Mayawati, Akhilesh Yadav and Lalu Prasad Yadav would see their respective voter base shrink in a big way.

In this manner, the proposed reservation-within-reservation may seriously impair the electoral prospects of regional satraps and give an advantage to the BJP for championing the cause of the most backward castes within the OBCs. Of all the regional satraps, Lalu Yadav would be least affected because while the Centre has not sub-categorised OBCs before, states like Bihar already have a sub-categorised OBC reservation system.

RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat had pitched for a review of the reservation policy ahead of Bihar Assembly polls.

So Lalu Yadav is better equipped than his counterparts, he too may not remain unscathed this time.

The Bihar "mahagathbandhan" or great alliance had hugely benefited in the October 2015 Assembly polls from a remark from no less than RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat — who, in September 2015 had pitched for a review of the reservation policy, contending it had been used for political ends and suggested the setting up of an apolitical committee to examine who needs the facility and for how long.

The Modi government did whatever firefighting it could to salvage the situation but did not succeed and lost Bihar.

This time, however, the Modi government will be better prepared, both in terms of time as well as giving an official demeanour to the reservation-within-reservation arrangement and conveying a goodwill message to the extremely backward communities among the OBCs.

But the BJP will find it is easier said than done. For one, the Opposition parties, particularly the regional ones, will leave no stone unturned to ensure that the BJP doesn’t get the mileage it is hoping for. Second, there will be legal hurdles.

It’s not for nothing that courts in Andhra Pradesh, before the creation of Telangana, had stalled the initiation of an OBC sub-quota system saying that religion-based quotas are not permitted.

Needless to point out, India is a democracy where anyone is free to reach out to courts on any issue!

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