With eye on OBC vote bank, BJP shifts focus to sub-castes

OBC Morcha president Dr K Laxman, who is also part of the party’s Parliamentary Committee, told DH that the initiatives are a bid to study what OBCs want

With an eye on the Other Backward Caste (OBC) votebank ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the Bharatiya Janata Party is looking at the reservation of all OBC sub-castes across 23 states in a bid to find out if any of them seek larger representation. The move is aimed at a chorus of demands from Opposition governments to increase reservation – while Bihar CM Nitish Kumar has sought an increase in the 50% cap on reservations, the Jharkhand assembly led by CM Hemant Soren cleared a bill to increase reservation to 77% just last week.

On Monday, the party held a meeting of representatives of OBC Morchas from 23 states, where the research and policy wing of the party’s OBC Morcha held workshops and handed out assignments to all attendees.

Party leaders said that representatives of the OBC Morchas of 23 states were asked to prepare a feedback on the status of OBC communities in their respective states, along with details of the demographics as well as percentage of reservation of these communities. The party, leaders said, aims to look at the “micro communities” within the OBC castes to gain their confidence.

OBC Morcha president Dr K Laxman, who is also part of the party’s Parliamentary Committee, told DH that the initiatives are a bid to study on what OBCs want. “We want to study the status of these communities across states to understand what they want, and to ensure that they are not part of the politics behind reservation,” said Laxman.

These initiatives could also help the party warm up to OBC communities like some subcastes of the Vokkaligas and Lingayats (who have been demanding inclusion into the Central OBC list), the Nairs of Kerala, as well as Kumhars, Lohars, Chandravanshi Samaj, and Kurmis in Bihar. The party’s clever caste coalition of non-Yadav OBCs in Uttar Pradesh was key to them retaining the state in the assembly elections held early this year.

The Modi government has formed the Rohini Commission in 2017 to study the sub-categorisation of OBCs; the Commission’s deadline, however, has seen as many as 13 extensions and it is due to submit its report in January 2023. OBC Morcha National General Secretary Nikhil Anand said that the policy and research wing will also look at the status independently.

“The Justice Rohini Commission is also looking at the Economically Backward Communities within the OBC cases. Inside the policy wing, we are also trying to conduct our own study, so that larger benefit is extended to everyone, especially to the most underprivileged. These initiates are to provide feedback for policy moves of the government and they go beyond votes,” said Anand.

The party also plans to reach out to intellectuals of these OBC communities and hold meetings with them across major cities of the 23 states. Party leaders also said that these initiatives could help the party seek out its next-generation leaders within OBC politics. The party had recently started policy wings across its various morchas to provide policy prescriptions to the government across different domains.