The Supreme Court of India has agreed to hear the Maharashtra government’s curative petition challenging the court’s earlier decision to strike down the Maratha quota. This hearing, scheduled for January 24, represents the state’s final legal effort following the dismissal of its review petition.
In May 2021, the Supreme Court’s five-judge Constitution Bench invalidated the Maharashtra State Reservation for Socially and Educationally Backward Classes Act, 2018, which had provided reservation for the Maratha community in educational institutions and government jobs. The court ruled that the law
“clearly violates Articles 14 and 16 of the Constitution which makes (it) ultra vires,”
as it exceeded the 50% ceiling limit of reservation set by the 1992 Indra Sawhney judgment without demonstrating extraordinary circumstances for the separate reservation.
Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde, in a statement to a Maratha news channel, expressed his gratitude towards the Supreme Court, saying,
“The Supreme Court has admitted our curative petition and will hear it on January 24… The curative petition was filed by our government. We worked hard on it for two months. Our efforts have yielded results. I want to thank the Supreme Court for adopting a positive approach and giving us an opportunity to present our side on Maratha reservation.”
He further emphasized the government’s commitment to providing the Maratha quota, stating, “We will place our arguments on how the Maratha community is socially backward.”
Shinde also criticized the previous Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government for its failure to show how the Maratha community was backward, leading to the scrapping of the reservations by the Supreme Court. He mentioned that the current government is gathering empirical data to address the errors noted by the Supreme Court and to substantiate the community’s social and educational backwardness.
“This empirical data will help us in the SC. Reservation was cancelled the last time for the Maratha community, because the Maha Vikas Aghadi government failed to show how the Maratha community was backward. The errors in that data, and observations made by the SC have been noted and the errors have been removed and brought before the SC,”
Shinde stated.
In a related development, reservation activist Manoj Jarange has given the state government a deadline until January 20 to meet the reservation demand. He announced plans for an indefinite hunger strike at Mumbai’s Azad Maidan if the demand is not met. Jarange also mentioned a mega gathering in Beed, where he expressed his intention to walk from Jalna’s Antarwali Sarati to Mumbai, with numerous community members joining him along the way.
This case holds significant implications for the Maratha community and the broader discourse on reservations in India. The Supreme Court’s decision to hear the curative petition offers a new avenue for the Maharashtra government to argue for the reinstatement of the Maratha quota, a matter of considerable political and social importance in the state.
