A politically loaded decision of the outgoing Anandiben Patel (BJP) government in Gujarat to award a 10 percent admission quota to economically backward classes (EBC) in higher education institutions as well as government jobs, has sowed confusion in the ranks of both admission and job seekers. The government which moved in haste has time to repent at leisure after the Gujarat high court struck down a state government ordinance issued on May 1 to this effect, terming it unconstitutional. The successor Vijay Rupani government has appealed against the decision in the Supreme Court which is now seized with the issue.

On August 29, a three judge apex court bench comprising Chief Justice T.S. Thakur and A.M. Khanwilkar and D.Y. Chandrachud JJ, extended the interim stay on the Gujarat high court order by another two weeks but directed that no new admissions be processed under the EBC category until the Supreme Court delivers final judgement in end September.  

Consequently, the entire process of admissions into the state’s government colleges and 29 universities is frozen until the Supreme Court pronounces its verdict. Thus the fate of about 3,000 students, who have already been granted admission into professional education courses (MBA, MCA, BE, architecture and pharmacy) under the EBC quota, hangs in the balance. In Gujarat University, 1,076 students have been admitted under the EBC quota in the arts and commerce programmes.

There is greater anxiety over admission into medical colleges. Thus far, 6,545 students have applied under the EBC quota but their applications too are frozen until the apex court delivers final judgement. Against this the total undergrad (MBBS) capacity in Gujarat’s 21 medical colleges is 3,300 seats, of which 1,175 are reserved for merit students. Realising the implications, on August 30, chief minister Rupani deferred implementation of the 10 percent EBC quota decreeing that the 6,545 EBC quota applications will be transferred to the general category.
Earlier, the first division bench of the Gujarat high court had invalidated the ordinance on the ground that it was not a classification but a reservation. And since the EBC quota would breach Supreme Court’s 50 percent ceiling on reservations, it is illegal, ruled the court. 

Monitors of the political theatre in this western seaboard state (pop.64 million), which is prime minister Narendra Modi’s bailiwick, are almost unanimous that the EBC quota was a reaction to the Patel-Patidar agitation for reservation in government colleges and jobs. As the stir spread across the state last summer, the Anandiben Patel government arrested 23-year-old Hardik Patel, leader of the Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti (PAAS) last October. But PAAS leaders were unimpressed with the announcement of the EBC quota, clearly decreed to defuse the Patidar agitation. “From day one we said that this was a lollipop to fool the Patels and we have been proved right. The court has duly struck down the EBC quota as unconstitutional. The BJP government in the state wants to keep the EBC quota issue pending until next year when the legislative assembly elections are due,” says Hardik Patel.

There’s a curious irony about the Patel-Patidar agitation for backward class/caste status. This is an economically powerful and a numerically strong community with a 14 percent share of the state’s population of 64 million and 21 percent voter representation. That this dominant community is determined to be classified as ‘backward’ is a telling testimony of youth unrest and unemployment in Gujarat. 

Following decades of neglect of primary-secondary education and English language learning in particular, the state’s youth are experiencing difficulties in qualifying for admission into higher ed institutions and corporate enterprises where the dominant language of communication is English. Hence the intensifying pressure for reservations in education and employment.

R.K. Mishra (Ahmedabad)