Lingayat subsect warns Karnataka govt of renewed OBC quota agitation from April 14

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Last year, the Panchamasali group – a key vote base for the ruling BJP – had staged a two-month-long protest march from Bagalkot in north Karnataka to the capital city of Bengaluru demanding reservations. The protest was called off after the then Karnataka chief minister B S Yediyurappa had sought time to address the reservation demand in a constitutional and legal manner.

The Panchamasali Lingayats are demanding inclusion in the OBC category to be eligible to avail 15 per cent of reservations in government education and jobs instead of a current 5 per cent quota. The community primarily engaged in agriculture has cited poverty among its large sections as a reason for demanding OBC reservations.

“On the basis of a request for six months to address the reservation issue, the agitation is being called off for six months,” the seer Jaya Mruthyunjaya Swami stated in March 2021, while signalling the end of protests for the time being.

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The leaders of the Panchamasali community, including BJP MLA Basavaraj Patil Yatnal, said that the reservation agitation was being called off for the time being based on an assurance Yediyurappa had made on the floor of the legislature of making an honest effort to resolve the issue.

On March 10, 2021, Yediyurappa and the BJP government in Karnataka bought time to constitute a three-member committee under the chairmanship of retired high court judge Subhash Adito to examine all demands.

“If the government does not show the will to provide reservations as sought by the Panchamasali Lingayats, then I will stage a dharna in the house and the protestors at the Freedom Park will go on a hunger strike,” Yatnal had warned in the assembly last March.

The Panchamasali Lingayats are now alleging that the state government has taken no measures to decide on its demand for OBC quota.

The state government has said that a survey is being conducted by the state backward classes commission to ascertain the socio-economic status and backwardness of the Panchamasali Lingayats.

Last week, Karnataka CM Basavaraj Bommai – who replaced Yediyurappa in July 2021 – said at an all-party meeting that a report had been sought from the advocate general on the legal implications of the various demands for new reservations by various communities.

“If the reservation has to be provided, it has to be in accordance with Constitutional provisions and Supreme Court order. The Advocate General has been asked to submit a report in this regard. The report would be placed before the next all-party meeting,” Bommai said.

The Panchamasalis claim to make up around 85 lakh of the six crore population in Karnataka and more than 70 per cent of the state Lingayat population – estimated to be around 17 per cent of the total population in the state.

The quota agitation was initially triggered in 2021 by a BJP MLA Murugesh Nirani who was at the time not part of the state cabinet. After the MLA was inducted into the cabinet, other leaders came to the forefront of the campaign, like MLA Yatnal who is aspiring for a cabinet berth. The issue has also obtained significant traction in the Panchamasali community itself on the grounds that the subsect has received less prominence.

Although Karnataka has seen several chief ministers from the Lingayat community – including Yediyurappa, Bommai, Jagdish Shettar – over the years the grouse of the Panchamasali subsect is that the community has not received significant political representation despite making up the largest chunk of the Veerashaiva Lingayat caste group.

The Panchamasali Lingayat’s threat of a relaunch of its 2021 agitation for OBC reservations has come when the opposition Congress party in Karnataka has moved to appoint a Lingayat man, M B Patil, as its campaign committee chairman for the 2023 state polls. The former minister M B Patil who was at the forefront of a demand by a section of the Lingayats for the status of a ‘minority religion for the community – when the Congress was in power in the state from 2013-18 – is set to take charge as the state Congress campaign chief on Monday at a big rally to be held at the Palace Grounds in Bengaluru.