Maratha...

“I had promised time-bound action. The report has been submitted to us... We will now complete other statutory requirements…” said Fadnavis.

The government, however, will have to walk a tightrope, especially heading into an election year.

First, it will have to decide how much reservation to accord the Marathas, keeping in mind the judicial scrutiny it may face. An ordinance issued by the previous Congress-ncp government and a law passed by the Fadnavis government, to grant the reservation, have already been struck down once by the high court in 2015. The state already has 52 per cent reservation and recommending anything over this will go against the 1992 Supreme Court judgment, which has set a ceiling of 50 per cent on quotas.

Second, the government will want to avoid antagonising the Other Backward Class (OBC) community, which constitutes 52 per cent of the state’s population. Including the Marathas in the existing OBC quota, to avoid further hiking reservations, would not go down too well with the latter. The Fadnavis government is hoping the commission report has sufficient data to offer it a chance to show that “extraordinary circumstances” exist in this case to grant a special reservation to Marathas.

“A lot depends on the report as it is by a statutory commission. Not just the conclusion, but the methodology used to collect data, the sample size and the relevance of the data. All of it will be crucial and if used properly, will work in favour of the government,” said a senior advocate, who did not wish to be named.

The government, meanwhile, is looking to “buy some time”. A senior cabinet minister, on the condition of anonymity, said, “We are yet to finalise the next course of action. First, we will seek legal opinions of constitutional experts, advocate general on the issue. We are hoping to table the report in the winter session of the state legislature and pass a law on reservation based on it.”

The winter session of the legislature begins on Monday.

“We know this [reservation decision] will be challenged in the high court,” said the minister. “As long as the court does not stay our reservation, we will sail through. We have better data and the backing of a statutory commission’s recommendations to fight the legal case. The legal case can go on for at least a year or more.”

The other option before the government is to do what the Tamil Nadu government did to protect its amendment. The Tamil Nadu government included it in the Schedule 9 of the Constitution. For this, the government will have to give Marathas reservation under the OBC category and then increase the quota for OBCS. This option may have stronger legal ground, but it stands on weak political feet. “The government can give Marathas reservation and they can go ahead and give it to Brahmins, but this cannot be within our 19 per cent quota,” said Anil Mahajan, an OBC leader, who heads the Maharashtra Mali Samaj Mahasangh. “We are going to demand that the chief minister remove Kunbi-marathas from the OBC category and include them in the Maratha category.” Kunbis are the peasant class among Marathas and they get benefit under the OBC category. “If Marathas, who make up 32 per cent of the population including Kunbis, were getting 16 per cent reservation, the OBC community will demand a hike in their reservation quota, too, based on its population, which was more than 52 per cent,” said Mahajan.

At least at face value, the commission seems to have strong data to back its recommendation. It has surveyed 43,629 families across 175 tehsils and studied 2 lakh memorandums seeking reservation for Marathas. It has also collected archival and present day data on Marathas to show that majority of the community has been historically classified as peasants and 62 per cent of the community are marginal farmers (with land holdings below 1 hectare). But, while it is easier to make a case for economic and educational backwardness, it may be a challenge to show that the community is socially backward or faces a social stigma. The report, according to an official, has made a case for social discrimination on two grounds. First being poorer access to education, smaller and fragmented land holdings and agrarian crisis are reasons that have driven Marathas out from rural areas to cities, and deprived them of social and economic standing. Second, the community is discriminated against even as a section within – the Kunbi-marathas – is included in the OBC category. cation took place without a proper ‘adaptability’ study as the two landscapes – original homes in Madhya Pradesh and the new one in Odisha – were different.

While Satkosia has a hilly landscape with people living inside the reserve, the Madhya Pradesh habitat is grasslands on a plateau without much human interference.

“Many factors, including adaptability, were not properly examined before the relocation,” said tiger conservationist Ullas Karanth.

Tripathy said the NTCA has put the ~19 crore tiger relocation exercise on hold after the recovery of the carcass of the threeyear-old tiger on Wednesday. The tiger may have died of a five-dayold wound that became infected. The animal, identified as MB2 and named Mahavir by his handlers in Satkosia, was shifted to the reserve from Madhya Pradesh in June in India’s first tiger translocation exercise.

The carcass was found under a bush 500 metres from the Raigoda area of the reserve in Angul district at 1pm on Wednesday, and officials said initially that he may have died after being caught in a trap set by poachers. Satkosia tiger reserve divisional forest officer P Ramaswamy said the site is inside the Nuagarh reserve forest of the Athgarh division, which has been proposed to be included in the tiger reserve.

“On prima facie investigation of the carcass, a deep-lacerated and five-day-old maggot-infected wound was observed in the dorsal neck region of the tiger which seems to be the cause of the mortality. The monitoring team could track the tiger till 10 am on Wednesday, but at 1pm there was no heartbeat in the radio collaring/satellite tracker,” said Ramaswamy, who has been appointed the investigating officer in the matter.

The carcass was incinerated after an autopsy in the afternoon.

Wildlife conservationists expressed surprise at how the tiger’s movement had not been detected despite it having a radio frequency and satellite collar fitted to its neck. Two surveillance teams were supposed to keep a watch on the tiger’s movements, but officials said they did not detect any unusual movements in the last couple of days.

Karanth, said the Odisha forest department personnel may have lacked the expertise to track it. “Just having a radio collar on the tiger’s neck isn’t enough. Expertise is needed to track it on a regular basis,” said Karanth.

He also said the authorities, including NTCA and WII, should have taken into account the prey base of the reserve before introducing the tigers into it. “At least 500 prey is needed for a tiger for its survival. A proper prey base study using line transact method is the proper procedure. I doubt if this was done,” he said.

Sen had earlier told HT that Satkosia was not an inviolate (free from human influence) area by any stretch of imagination and there were hardly any herbivores there. “In 1996, I had opposed declaring Satkosia as a tiger reserve and it was not fit for the relocation,” he said.

Sundari was in September suspected of killing a woman, followed by a man in October, causingwildlifeofficialsto decideon tranquillising her and putting her in an enclosure. Mogg, the chair of the European Research Group comprising party lawmakers who lobby for a hard Brexit or complete break from the EU, declared no confidence in May, and led a series of such letters by MPS. A leadership challenge will be triggered if 48 Conservatives write such letters to the chairman of the party’s so-called 1922 committee. May can be toppled if 158 of her 315 lawmakers vote against her.

May was grilled in the House of Commons for more than three hours on the agreement, and insisted that it included the best possible terms of leaving the EU. The heated exchanges were marked by minimal support for the agreement even from Conservative MPS. May said: “Delivering Brexit involves difficult choices for all of us…i do not pretend that this has been a comfortable process – or that either we or the EU are entirely happy with all of the arrangements that have been included within it.

“A good Brexit, a Brexit which is in the national interest is possible. We have persevered and have made a decisive breakthrough.” She added, “We can choose to leave with no deal, we can risk no Brexit at all or we can choose to unite and support the best deal that can be negotiated.”

Her view of the agreement was trenchantly opposed by Raab, other Conservative MPS and even Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who said May’s government was “falling apart”, and called the agreement “a huge and damaging failure”.