Panchamasali Reservation Movement Committee Honorary President Shri Basava Jai Mrityunjaya Swamy leading a ‘Rasta Roko’ protest on the Pune-Bengaluru National Highway against lathicharge on community members in Belagavi on December 12, 2024. Photo: Special Arrangements
LLast week, Lingayat-Panchamasali activists protested in front of the Suvarna Vidhan Soudha in Belagavi in north Karnataka, where the winter session of the legislature was underway. The agitation turned violent demanding inclusion of the community under category 2-A of the Other Backward Class (OBC) reservation list. But this is not a new protest; This is a three-decade-old demand but there is no sign of a solution.
With this demand, the seer of the Lingayat Panchamasali Peeth was actively involved in the movement for independent religion status of the Lingayat faith under the leadership of Sri Basava Jaya Mrityunjaya Swami. The movement has seen many ups and downs due to the vacancies of community leaders and politicians.
The seer led a massive march from Koodalsangama, an important pilgrimage center for Lingayats, to Bengaluru during the previous BJP regime and almost brought the government to its knees. Fully aware of the complexities of reclassification but unwilling to incur the wrath of the dominant Lingayat-Panchmasali community, the Basavaraj Bommai-led government has cleverly adopted a strategy of killing two birds with one stone.
Instead of stirring the whole nest by tinkering with 2-A category, it created two more categories – 2-C and 2-D – to satisfy Panchamasalis and Vokkaligas who were demanding a bigger share of the reservation pie then. . And to capture the Hindutva vote bank just before the 2023 assembly elections, the government sought to scrap the 4% reservation given to Muslims under category 2-B and redistribute it between these two communities. Two influential communities are divided on whether to accept the proposal. At the same time, in response to a petition in the Supreme Court, the then BJP government submitted an affidavit not to implement the order in the new reservation categories.
Months after the Congress government came to power in 2023, Panchamasali started the agitation again. It turned violent in Belagavi and there was lathi charge. Considering the sensitivity of the issue, the government has allowed its own ministers and parliamentarians to participate in the protest while being cautious in responding to the demand.
In his cautious reply to the Karnataka Legislative Council, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah pointed out that he was not against the demand. “Let me make this clear. I don’t use the word demand, but ‘insistence’ is unconstitutional,” he said, and went into details of the legal tussle.
There are three major legal obstacles to the five-year demand. The first is a PIL filed by Raghavendra DG against State of Karnataka and others. The then Secretary of Backward Classes filed an affidavit in this petition in the Karnataka High Court, stating that the government will not change the existing structure of category 2-A by adding or deleting any caste.
The second hurdle is the affidavit of compliance/undertaking filed by the Karnataka government in the Supreme Court in March 2023 that no change or any addition or deletion in category 2-A shall be implemented without further approval of the court.
The third is the interim report of the Karnataka Backward Classes Commission, which recommended against any change in the structure of 2-A and abolition of 2-B.
Apart from these, 102 communities currently in 2-A category oppose the idea of larger and stronger communities joining the group and reducing their share.
Another ideal course of action for the Lingayat-Panchmasali community is to approach the Permanent Commission for Backward Classes for inclusion in Category 2-A. The Chief Minister has been saying that according to Article 340 of the Constitution, any demand related to reservation should be through the commission.
Meanwhile, leaders of the Panchamasali community, including Drashta, have planned an agitation to exert pressure. The opposition party BJP created a ruckus in the House over lathicharge. Even if the BJP is caught on the wrong foot in this case, especially because of the affidavit, it does not want to miss the opportunity to put the government on the mat.
published – December 17, 2024 at 01:02 pm IST