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Journalism of Courage
Panchamasali Lingayats, a sub-caste of Karnataka’s dominant Lingayat community, have been demanding inclusion in Category 2A of the Other Backward Classes (OBC) for more than three years. This will enable them to avail the 15 per cent quota in government jobs and college admissions earmarked for this category, as against the 5 per cent quota the Lingayat community currently enjoys under Category 3B of Karnataka’s OBC quota matrix.
On Tuesday (July 23), community leaders held a meeting with lawyers to look at how to take forward the agitation which had fizzled out in 2023. Here is all you need to know about the Panchamasalis’ quota demands, and the political ramifications of it.
The Lingayats (officially classified as Hindu sub-caste ‘Veerashaiva Lingayats’) are followers of Basavanna, a 12th century philosopher-saint who started a radical anti-caste movement which rejected orthodox ritualistic Hindu practices in favour of a more personal, affective relationship with God, specifically Lord Shiva.
Today, the Lingayat community is an amalgamation of many sub-castes, who, put together, can affect electoral outcomes in 90-100 of Karnataka’s 224 seats. Of these sub-castes, the agriculturalist Panchamasalis are the largest, making up nearly 70 per cent of the Lingayat population. They claim to number around 85 lakh — about 14% of Karnataka’s population of roughly six crore.
Yet the Panchamasalis have long felt under-represented in Karnataka politics. The state’s Lingayat chief ministers like B S Yediyurappa (the preeminent Lingayat leader in Karnataka for decades), Basavaraj Bommai, and Jagadish Shettar have all belonged to other sub-castes. The community also claims to be economically worse-off than others.
OBCs comprise many different castes and sub-castes who are at different levels of marginalisation depending on whether they own land, their occupation, etc. To prevent any one dominant OBC group from cornering all quota benefits, most states have come up with further sub-categorisation of OBCs, which takes into account different castes’ relative marginalisation, and their populations.
In Karnataka, the 32 per cent total reservation for OBCs in government jobs and college admissions is distributed among five categories. Of these, at present, 102 castes fall in the 2A OBC category in Karnataka (see Table 1).
| Table 1: Karnataka’s current quota matrix |
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| CATEGORY | QUOTA | |
| Other Backward Classes (OBC) | 32 | |
| Category 1 | Backward Castes | 4 |
| Category 2A | Other Backward Classes | 15 |
| Category 2B | Muslims | 4 |
| Category 3A | Vokkaliga, etc. | 4 |
| Category 3B | Lingayat, etc. | 5 |
| Scheduled Castes (SC) | 15 | |
| Scheduled Tribes (ST) | 3 | |
| Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) | 10 | |
| TOTAL RESERVATIONS | 60 | |
The more than two-decades old Panchamasali disaffection with their Category 3B status came to the forefront in 2020 when wealthy BJP MLA Murugesh Nirani was not inducted into then Chief Minister Yediyurappa’s cabinet. Nirani galvanised support for himself among Panchamasali leaders by championing the community’s long-standing demand.
Although Nirani backtracked after being inducted into the cabinet in 2021, leaders like BJP’s Basanagouda Patil Yatnal, and Congress’ Vijayanand Kashapannavar and Lakshmi Hebbalkar took the grievance up. Panchamasali pontiff Basavaraja Mruthyunjaya Swamy led a state-wide agitation for the demand. Between January and March 2021, a Panchamasali group marched more than 600 km, from Bagalkot in north Karnataka to Bengaluru, in protest.
The agitation was called off in July 2021 based on assurances by Yediyurappa on the floor of the state assembly. “As per a Cabinet decision to resolve demands for reservations by various castes under legal and constitutional norms, a three-member committee is being constituted under the chairmanship of retired High Court judge Subhash Adi,” Yediyurappa had said.
Yediyurappa resigned as chief minister on July 26 amidst growing dissension in the Karnataka BJP. The Lingayat stir was one among many contributors to this. He was succeeded by Basavaraj Bommai who quickly tried to curry favour among the state’s OBC groups — including the Panchamasalis.
On March 27, 2023, the Bommai government scrapped the 4 per cent quota under Category 2B for Muslims, and distributed it (2 per cent each) among the Vokkaligas and Lingayats in newly-created Categories 2C and 2D. After the move, the Lingayat quota increased from 5 to 7 per cent, and the Vokkaliga quota from 4 to 6 per cent (see Table 2).
| Table 2: Quota matrix proposed by BJP government, currently stalled in court |
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| CATEGORY | QUOTA | |
| Other Backward Classes (OBC) | 32 | |
| Category 1 | Backward Castes | 4 |
| Category 2A | Other Backward Classes | 15 |
| Category 2B | Muslims | – |
| Category 2C | Vokkaliga, etc.* | 6+ |
| Category 2D | Lingayat, etc.* | 7+ |
| Scheduled Castes (SC) | 17 | |
| Scheduled Tribes (ST) | 7 | |
| Economically Weaker Sections (EWS)* | 4 | |
| TOTAL RESERVATIONS | 66 | |
| *The proposal includes redistributing 6% EWS quota between Lingayats and Vokkaligas |
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Bommai, and the BJP, hoped that this move would help secure the entire Lingayat and Vokkaliga vote for the upcoming assembly elections. The Panchamsalis, however, were insistent on their demand of being included in Category 2A.
Moreover, Muslim petitioners soon approached the Supreme Court to have the Karnataka government order repealed. The court observed that the changes made were “shaky and flawed”, and adjourned the matter after the Karnataka government provided an affidavit stating it will continue with the existing OBC quotas. There has been no progress vis-a-vis this situation since then.
In the end, the BJP failed to placate the Panchamasalis, which ended up costing the party in the May 2023 assembly elections. Congress, under Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, came to power in the state and won the support of a large section of the Lingayat community, which had staunchly backed BJP since the 1990s.
The BJP won only 18 of the 68 seats where it fielded Lingayat candidates, including 7 of 27 seats where it fielded candidates from the Panchamasali sub-sect. The Congress, on the other hand, won 37 seats of the 48 seats where it fielded Lingayat candidates, including 10 of the 14 seats it gave to Panchamasali candidates.
The Congress won the Karnataka state assembly elections held in May 2023. Since then, it has been buying time for the Supreme Court to provide a legal solution in the matter.
The government is also likely to want to defer any decision on the quota demand until findings of the Karnataka Social, Economic and Caste Survey are accepted by the state cabinet and made public. The Chairman of the Backward Classes Commission handed this report to the government in February this year. Incidentally, both the Lingayats and the Vokkaligas are opposed to the survey. They fear that it might underestimate their population, and thus affect future quota plans.
The Congress, which is heavily reliant on the support of the existing Category A OBC communities, could recommend the inclusion of all Lingayats in the central OBC list as a balancing act. This would help retain the party’s support base among existing OBC groups while placating all Lingayats at the same time.
When he was Karnataka chief minister, Yediyurappa too wanted to demand the inclusion of all Lingayats in the central OBC list. He was reportedly dissuaded from doing so by Union Home Minister Amit Shah. Currently only 16 Lingayat sub-castes who are considered “very backward” are provided reservations under the OBC quota for central government jobs and college administrations.
With the Panchamasalis once again renewing their demand for Category A status, the issue is likely to provide political opportunity to anyone who supports the community.
