Gujjars threaten to hold agitation across state

Community members say state govt deceived them

Reacting to the Rajasthan High Court's decision of scrapping reservation given to the Gurjar community, its leaders held a meeting on Saturday to chalk out a plan to restart their agitation to get increased quota in government jobs and education institutes.

Members of Gurjar Aarakshan Sangharsh Samiti blamed the state government for this and once again threatened to launch mass agitation across the state.

Gujjar Samiti’s spokesperson Himmat Singh Gurjar, holding state government responsible for court’s decision, told DH, “Today, we started analyzing the court’s judgement in depth. The state government has deceived us.  We knew that the decision would not be in our favour until Gurjar reservation gets listed under Schedule IX of the Constitution. We will be holding the stir once again in the state.”

A high level meeting will be held on Sunday to decide the further strategy.

Dissatisfied  with the decision, Gujjar leader, ex-army Col Kirori Singh Bainsla said, “We will fight until justice is pronounced. Our community is ready to fight, the BJP government has failed to fulfill their promises.”

The Division Bench of the Rajasthan High Court on Friday struck down the 5% quota  in Special Backward Classes (SBC) reservation in the state given to Gujjars and five other communities.

The bench, comprising Justice M N Bhandari and Justice J K Ranka, pronounced the judgement. The decision to provide reservation was taken on November 28, 2012. A separate 5% quota to the SBCs without touching the 21% reservation available to Other Backward Classes took the overall reservation in jobs and education to 54% in the state.

Since 2006, the Gujjars have created the stir demanding quota. The community members blocked national highways and railway tracks and were fired upon by the
police. 

As many as 72 people died during the agitation. The Gujjars showed their discontent with the court’s decision and held the state government responsible for not not fulfilling their promise to get the provision protected under Schedule IX of the Constitution.

The community, presently enjoying the OBC status, had initially demanded its inclusion in the Scheduled Tribes and was later persuaded to accept the creation of a new reserved category for it.

The court held that the special reservation beyond the permissible limit of 50% cannot be made and the report of the OBC Commission of the state was a calculated one to favour these communities.