Breaching the 50% upper limit set for reservation by the Supreme Court isn’t any simple process, as different states which lately elevated their quotas for specific teams solely to have had their laws caught at completely different ranges have seen.

However, whereas upholding the Centre’s 10% reservation for Economically Weaker Sections in November 2022, the Supreme Court opened a window by suggesting that the 50% ceiling was not rigid.

Some states, comparable to Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand which have tried to boost their quota ceilings have sought that their Bills looking for the identical be put underneath the Ninth Schedule of the Constitution, which might put them in a “safe harbour” in terms of judicial overview. Most of the legal guidelines protected underneath the Schedule concern agriculture / land points.

In Karnataka itself, the Congress manifesto got here days after the Supreme Court stayed the incumbent state BJP authorities’s pre-poll order of scrapping the 4% reservation for Muslims and distributing it equally among the many state’s two dominant communities, Lingayats and Vokkaligas.

Earlier, in 2021, the Supreme Court had struck down the Maharashtra authorities’s provision of offering a Maratha quota, for exceeding the 50% ceiling restrict.

The Tamil Nadu 69% quota got here on the again of its lengthy historical past of social justice. Currently, it includes 18% for SCs, 1% for STs, 20% for Most Backward Classes (MBCs), and 30% for Backward Classes (BCs), which additionally embody Christians and Muslims.

In the times after Independence, Tamil Nadu had 16% reservation for SCs and STs, as Constitutionally mandated, aside from 25% for backward courses.

In 1971, the M Karunanidhi-led DMK authorities elevated OBC reservation to 30% and that for SC/STs to 18%, with 1% put aside for STs. In 1989-90, once more when Karunanidhi was the CM, the DMK authorities put aside 20% reservation solely for MBCs, taking them out of OBCs, who continued to retain 30% total now as BCs, for state authorities instructional establishments and jobs.

Karunanidhi determined to separate the MBCs and BCs after an agitation by PMK founder S Ramadoss within the late Nineteen Eighties. Since the Seventies, there had been panels that validated this, together with the A N Sattanathan Commission (1971) and J A Ambasankar Commission (1982) underneath the MGR regime.

When the Tamil Nadu quota bumped into authorized obstacles after the Supreme Court’s 1992 verdict setting a 50% ceiling, the then CM J Jayalalithaa, together with different leaders of varied events, led a delegation to New Delhi to satisfy then Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao. Tamil Nadu’s reservation provision was then included within the Ninth Schedule.

However, the controversy on reservation is way from settled even in Tamil Nadu. Literally minutes earlier than the Election Commission introduced the schedule for the Assembly elections in Tamil Nadu in 2021, the then AIADMK regime had declared an extra 10.5% reservation for OBC Vanniyars.

The announcement, not surprisingly, stirred a hornet’s nest. The Vanniyars are represented by the Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK), an ally of the AIADMK and NDA, and different OBC castes comparable to Thevars and Gounders instantly protested towards the transfer to offer the Vanniyars the quota privilege.

Then CM Edappadi Ok Palaniswami, a Gounder, and Deputy CM O Panneerselvam, a Thevar, each confronted backlash from their very own vote banks. Panneerselvam, who made his displeasure at Palaniswami’s choice recognized, was compelled to vow voters that the quota to Vanniyars was “temporary” and would final solely until a caste-wise census was accomplished and, presumably, settle the questions of backwardness in addition to power of varied teams.

Incidentally, in 2021, the AIADMK authorities had arrange a fee to gather quantifiable knowledge on castes, communities, and tribes, and to work out the methodology for conducting a caste survey, appointing retired Madras High Court decide Justice A Kulasekharan, as chairman. The panel is but to finish its work.

In any case, the AIADMK misplaced the 2021 elections and went out of energy, whereas the Vanniyar reservation transfer didn’t survive the Madras High Court. In November 2021, the court docket quashed the choice as “ultra vires of the Indian Constitution”.

Cut to 2023, and the approaching Lok Sabha elections. It’s the DMK that’s in energy now, and Chief Minister M Ok Stalin is among the main Opposition voices looking for that the Modi-led authorities on the Centre maintain a caste census.

In a current coverage be aware, the DMK authorities harassed that it was dedicated to implementing and defending the 69% quota in instructional establishments and appointments in authorities service.

Political observers say it isn’t shocking that completely different governments have discovered it easier to kick the can down the highway, fairly than base their caste arguments on concrete knowledge. Retired HC decide Justice Ok Chandru says the method is complicated and sure to result in protests, from communities not noted in addition to these anticipating a better share, making inflated claims of their numbers.

On the Congress’s 75% quota promise, Justice Chandru says: “75% just isn’t unlawful, however to reach there, you want a caste census, discounting earlier numbers.

Karnataka’s case is additional sophisticated by the presence there of a robust mutt tradition and two dominant castes, Lingayats and Vokkaligas. Tamil Nadu’s political panorama is relatively much less complicated.