Why Odisha BJP govt’s education quota move blunts BJD’s social justice pitch

The Majhi government’s move seems to be an attempt to checkmate the Opposition parties, the Navneen Patnaik-led BJD and the Congress, which are now increasingly putting pressure on the BJP over the rights of the backward and deprived classes.

Odisha higher education minister Suryabanshi Suraj said Thursday that the BJP government has ensured social justice by extending reservation to the backward classes in education.

“The Constitution of India has given rights to the backward classes but it remained zero in the past. We ensured 11.25% reservation (in education to OBC students) in accordance with the Supreme Court ruling of keeping the caste-based reservation within 50%,” Suraj said.

The reservation for the Scheduled Caste (SC) and the Scheduled Tribe (ST) communities in Odisha has been 16.25% and 22.5% respectively.

The Majhi government’s decision seems to have put the principal Opposition BJD on the back foot, which called it an “eyewash”, claiming that “the move would not benefit the SEBCs much”.

BJD outreach to OBCs

Despite the caste factor not dominating Odisha politics, the BJD after losing power in the state in June last year, has been trying to seize on the issue for its resurgence.

With the OBCs making up 54% of the state’s population as per the unofficial data, the BJD is intensifying its attempts to champion their cause in order to consolidate its position among these groups, party sources said.

During the last Assembly session in March, the BJD MLAs took out a rally to the statue of B R Ambedkar and staged a dharna to press for 27% OBC quota as well a statewide caste survey.

Reacting to the Majhi Cabinet’s decision, the BJD’s OBC cell chairman Arun Kumar Sahoo said it announced “partial reservation” for the SEBCs, pointing out that the government has excluded the state-run professional institutions from the quota ambit.

“The government announced reservation for courses where seats are lying vacant every year. We demand reservation in medical, engineering and other technical courses and the Cabinet has not taken any call on this. If they can’t ensure reservation for SEBCs in medical and engineering courses, then there is no need for them to take credit,” Sahoo said.

The BJD’s criticism has also been echoed by Congress leader and ex-Union minister Srikant Jena, who called the state government’s move a “cruel joke”.

“The announcement by the Chief Minister declaring 11.25% reservation for OBCs in higher education but excluding technical courses like medical, engineering and other professional education, is a complete betrayal of the 54% OBC/SEBC students and youth. Though it’s projected as a historic step, it offers no real benefit to the backward classes,” said Jena.

The BJP, however, hailed the decision as a “historic move” towards social justice, planning “mass outreach programmes to take its message across the state”. The BJP said it would also “expose how the BJD deprived the backward classes of their constitutional rights”.

OBC politics

Ahead of the 2009 Assembly polls, the then BJD government had passed the Orissa Reservation of Posts and Services (for SEBC) Act, 2008 to give 27% reservation to the OBCs in government jobs. Some job aspirants challenged the Act in the state administrative tribunal, which quashed it in 2013. Later, the Orissa High Court too upheld the tribunal’s order while holding that the law breached the Supreme Court’s 50% cap on reservations.

The reservation for backward classes was subsequently reduced to 11.25% in jobs, even as no quota was ever allotted in education.

Since January 2020 the BJD has been especially vocal on the social justice issue with party MPs meeting Union Home Minister Amit Shah in August 2021 to demand a caste census.

In May 2023, the Patnaik government tasked the Odisha State Commission for Backward Classes (OSCBC) to conduct a survey to assess the social and economic condition of the OBCs in the state.

The OSCBC later submitted its report to the state government, which has kept it under the wraps so far.

In 2019 and 2020, Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan had written to the then CM Patnaik to press for 27% reservation for the SEBCs in jobs and education.