BJP to give 27% tickets to OBCS in civic polls

MUMBAI: Days after the Supreme Court directed the state election commission to hold local bodies elections without the 27% quota for Other Backward Classes (OBC), the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Saturday announced that it would give 27% of the tickets to the candidates from OBC community if the state government was unable to restore reservation for the community before the polls.

The opposition party in Maharashtra decided during its OBC morcha (front) cell meeting where leader of opposition and former chief minister Devendra Fadnavis asked the BJP workers to “expose” Uddhav Thackerayled Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government by taking the issue to every village and district in the coming months.

This year the state is expected to see elections in 23 municipal corporations, including Mumbai, Thane, Pune, Navi Mumbai, Kolhapur; 27 district councils, 298 panchayat samitis, 320 nagar panchayats and nagar councils. OBCS were given 27% in the local bodies before it was struck down by the apex court for breaching the 50% reservation cap on March 4 last year. Fadnavis slammed the MVA government for failing to collect empirical data necessary to restore reservation for the OBC community, as per the Supreme Court order.

“BJP is going to be very aggressive until the OBC reservation is restored. It is because of the incompetency of this government that the empirical survey is not conducted in the last two and half years. We have decided to give 27% election tickets to the OBC candidates, in case elections are held without OBC quota, in the local bodies,” Fadnavis said.

This is not the first time a political party has taken such a stand. Last year, during bypolls of several zilla parishads and gram panchayats, all the major political parties, including the BJP, had declared 27% candidature to the OBC community to ensure they are not deprived of the political representation in the local bodies. On October 5, elections in 85 seats of district councils and 144 seats of panchayat samitis were held after SC stayed the OBC quota for want of empirical data and cancelled the elections of the representatives elected from the above seats reserved for the OBCS.

On January 18 this year, 336 seats from nagar panchayats, 209 seats from gram panchayats, 23 from zilla parishads and one seat from Sangli-miraj-kupwada municipal corporation went for polls. These were the seats that were earlier reserved under the OBC quota but were converted to the open category before holding polls, as per the SC order.

Fadnavis also accused the MVA government of hatching a conspiracy against the OBC reservation. “The SC order against breaching the 50% reservation quota first came in 2010 but the then Congress-led governments did nothing in Maharashtra and at the national level,” the opposition leader said, addressing the party workers.

Responding to the BJP’S allegation, the state Congress unit accused the BJP and Fadnavis of creating hurdles in OBC reservation in Maharashtra. “BJP and Devendra Fadnavis are solely responsible for the present situation on the OBC reservation in the state. BJP’S DNA is anti-obc and their sudden love and concern towards the OBC community is nothing but show off,” said Nana Patole, president of Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee (MPCC).