New Delhi, March 26: Narendra Modi today assured a delegation of Jat leaders that his government would explore all legal means to see if a Supreme Court order that struck down the community's inclusion in the list of OBCs in nine states could be reversed.
The Prime Minister reportedly told the delegates, who included leaders from the BJP and members of khap panchayats, that the Centre would do what was "legally tenable".
The court had last week scrapped a decision taken by the previous government to include the politically and economically powerful community in the list of OBCs in nine states, saying it was based on "outdated data" and would amount to "retrograde governance".
The March 2014 notification issued by the then UPA government had entitled the Jats to a share of the education and job quotas in central institutions and civil services earmarked for other castes and sub-castes in this slot.
The Modi government had defended the quota in court. The BJP has 27 Jat MPs.
The delegation, led by community leaders from Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Rajasthan and even Gujarat, raised three demands when they met Modi at his residence this morning.
The first was to find a mechanism to keep the reservation quota intact. "Our youths have already got admissions under this policy, some of them have got jobs. If they are disentitled, it would be bad for their morale as well as that of the community," said O.P. Dhankar, a minister from Haryana.
The second demand was for a review petition that, they said, should "ideally" be heard by a larger bench.
The delegates also requested Modi to see if it was possible to restore the quota through an executive order.
Central minister Sanjeev Kumar Balyan asked for a fresh, time-bound survey on the demographics and the socio-economic status of Jats. "The UPA's survey was slipshod because it seems to have been restricted to just well-off Jats from urban areas," the Muzaffarnagar MP said.
"The fact is 90 per cent of us still live in villages, working on our land. Our land holdings have drastically shrunk over time. We are not better off than the Ahirs (Yadavs) and the Gujjars who have been the principal beneficiaries of the OBC reservation. "
Sources said Modi tried to lighten the mood, saying: "So many Jats in one place and not one of you is laughing or even smiling. Please crack a joke." But the delegates stuck to their "restore-our-quota mission".
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