Pleas filed in Bombay HC against GR for Kunbi certificates to Marathas

Mumbai: A bunch of petitions has been filed in the Bombay High Court, challenging the Maharashtra government's decision to issue Kunbi caste certificates to the Maratha community for availing reservation in education and public service.

While two fresh petitions have been filed against the decision, another person, who had earlier filed a plea against the inclusion of Marathas in the Other Backward Classes (OBC) category, also sought to move an application challenging the recent government decision.

The pleas claimed the government's decision was arbitrary, unconstitutional and bad in law, and deserves to be quashed.

The impugned government resolutions are nothing but an act of political expediency to please and placate members of the Maratha community, one of the petitions said.

It claimed the government has been contradicting itself on the very issue of providing reservation to the Maratha community.

A bench of Chief Justice Shree Chandrashekhar and Justice Gautam Ankhad is likely to take up the pleas for hearing in due course.

On Wednesday, Manoj Sasane, who had filed a petition earlier, mentioned his plea before the bench headed by the Chief Justice, seeking permission to amend it so as to also challenge the recent government resolution.

The bench asked him to file an application seeking such an amendment.

Sasane, chairperson of the OBC Welfare Foundation, had in his petition challenged various government decisions issued from 2004 allowing Marathas to seek Kunbi caste certificates.

Last week, advocate Vinit Vinod Dhotre filed a public interest litigation (PIL), claiming the government resolution arbitrarily extended the OBC status to Marathas, who are a politically dominant and socially advanced community.

The PIL alleged the government decision discriminates against genuine OBC communities by diluting their share of reservation.

Another petition filed by a trust - Shiva Akhil Bhartiya Veershaiva Yuvak Sanghatana - also challenged the GR, citing numerous reports by the State Backward Classes Commission and the National Backward Classes Commission that Maratha and Kunbi are not one and the same.

The government could not have once again endeavoured to propagate that Maratha and Kunbi were one and the same, the plea said.

The petitions sought for the GR issued to be quashed and pending hearing of the matter, an interim stay on its implementation.

The government's decision to issue Kunbi caste certificates to eligible persons from the Maratha community came after quota activist Manoj Jarange staged an indefinite hunger strike for five days from August 29 at Azad Maidan in south Mumbai.

For five days, Jarange and his supporters surrounded several vital areas in south Mumbai, drawing ire of the Bombay High Court, which said the city had been paralysed and brought to a standstill.

On September 2, the government issued a resolution on the Hyderabad gazetteer and announced the formation of a committee to facilitate the issuance of Kunbi caste certificates to Marathas who are able to produce documentary evidence recognising them as Kunbis in the past.

There has been restlessness among OBCs after the state social justice and special assistance department issued the GR on implementing the Hyderabad gazetteer, which will allow eligible members of the Maratha community to apply for Kunbi caste certificates. This will enable them to claim quota under the OBC category after certificates are issued. PTI SP GK