Fadnavis slams Maharashtra govt over OBC reservation; 'MVA raised fingers, did nothing'

Former Maharashtra Chief Minister and Leader of Opposition (LoP) Devendra Fadnavis slammed the Shiv Sena-led Maha Vikas Aghadi government and said that they did not do anything for two years and only raised fingers towards the Central government over the OBC reservation issue. 

He appealed to the Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray-led government to complete the process in three months. "We will not tolerate future elections without OBC reservation," the BJP leader said.

He added, "Supreme Court has made it clear that the empirical data with the Central government is not useful for the triple test. The Constitutional bench has said that for the triple test, the data will be prepared by the State Backward Commission."

SC directs 27% seats reserved fr OBC to be notified as general seat

The apex court on Wednesday directed the  Maharashtra State Election Commission (SEC) to notify 27% of seats reserved for OBCs in the local body polls as general category so that the election process can be taken forward. The top court had on December 6 stated till further order the local body polls in the state on seats reserved for Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and had stated that the poll process for other seats would continue.

An SC bench of Justices AM Khanwilkar and CT Ravikumar had directed the SEC to issue free notification for the 27% seats within a week. The court was hearing an application filed by the MVA government seeking modification on last week order.

The SC also dismissed a plea by the Maharashtra government seeking direction to the Central government to disclose the Socia-Economic and Caste Census 2011's raw caste data of Other Backward Classes (OBC) after the Centre submitted that the data was flawed and unusable.

During the hearing, the Solicitor General of India Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Central government, said that the raw data of SECC 2011 is "useless" and "worthless" as the SECC 2011 was not meant to collect OBCs data.

While hearing the matter on December 6, the SC had observed that a similar matter had emerged before it earlier and a three-judge bench had delivered a judgement in which the court had stated apex court had noted the triple test to be followed before provisioning reservation for the OBC category. 

(With PTI inputs)