T. Chiranjeevulu IAS (Ret), President & Founder BCIF( BC Intellectuals Forum)
The "Reservation Hatao" Agitation in Delhi: History and Real Character
1. Who is actually behind this movement?
The "Reservation Hatao" (Remove Reservations) agitation grew primarily out of Instagram. By July 2026, media reports put its following at roughly 5.6 million on that platform alone, with thousands more followers on X. It presents itself not as a conventional political party but as a grassroots citizens' movement. Yet at its Delhi event on 21 August, right-wing commentator Ajit Bharati took a prominent speaking role, and Union Minister J.P. Nadda has since met the movement's representatives — a meeting Nadda himself described as "cordial," adding that further discussions would follow. This is a politically significant development. At its core, this campaign functions as a calculated effort by dominant-caste groups to prevent historically oppressed communities from advancing.
2. What are the movement's core demands?
- Replacing caste-based reservation with a purely economic criterion.
- A government white paper on the reservation system.
- Minimum eligibility marks for reservation beneficiaries.
- Expanded benefits for the Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) category.
- Broadening the "creamy layer" exclusion.
- A fresh review of SC/ST reservation policy.
- Opposition to UGC caste-equity regulations.
- Amendments to the SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act.
Each of these demands invites some direct questions.
Q1: Why do reservations exist at all?
Reservation is not charity extended out of kindness to oppressed communities. It is a fundamental right guaranteed by the Constitution. Centuries of caste-based denial of access to education, occupation, and power created deep social, economic, and political inequalities; reservation (under Articles 15(4), 16(4), and related provisions) is the constitutional mechanism designed to correct those inequalities and move the country toward genuine equality. Treating reservation as a poverty-alleviation scheme misunderstands its purpose entirely. Its real goals are social justice, fair representation, equal opportunity, and redress for historical injustice — what is elsewhere called affirmative action or positive discrimination, practised in many countries, including the United States. The key difference is this: in most such countries, a majority extends reservation benefits to minorities. In India, uniquely, it is often numerical majorities (in terms of population share) among the historically oppressed who are seeking reservation from groups that have historically dominated resources and institutions.
Q2: Doesn't reservation compromise "merit"? What does merit even mean?
Merit cannot be measured by examination marks alone. A student who has had access to a good school, private tuition, coaching, books, computers, and educated parents from early childhood owes a share of those marks to that access. A student from a poor family, the first in their family to attend college, studying with limited resources, faces an entirely different reality. Defining merit purely by marks, without accounting for these disparities, delivers only formal equality. The Constitution's aim is substantive equality — equality in fact, not merely on paper.
India's education system has long equated "merit" with the ability to memorise and reproduce content in examinations — a model that structurally favours those from privileged castes with generational access to educational capital. Educators have widely criticised this mark-centric evaluation system for entrenching rote learning at the expense of creativity, critical thinking, and practical skill. Students from artisan castes, rural backgrounds, or labouring communities often bring experiential and practical skills that a purely written, memorisation-based exam simply fails to capture or reward.
Recent reforms attempt to address this gap. The National Education Policy 2020 (NEP 2020) explicitly seeks to move away from rote-learning culture toward experiential and project-based learning and critical thinking. There is also growing support for holistic assessment — evaluating communication skills, practical knowledge, and critical thinking rather than a single written exam. Only when assessment methods are redesigned to surface a student's genuine ability and creativity will students from every social background receive a fair and equal opportunity.
Q3: Can thousands of years of inequality really be undone in three decades?
This is perhaps the most important question of all. Caste-based privilege and exclusion in education, knowledge, occupation, and power persisted in Indian society for millennia. By contrast, 27% OBC reservation in central government jobs has been in effect only since 1993 — barely three decades — and in central educational institutions only since 2008. How can anyone reasonably claim that centuries of entrenched social inequality have been erased by three decades of corrective action? This is not a question of sentiment; it demands an answer grounded in data.
In fact, over roughly 80 years of independent governance, social, economic, and political inequality has, if anything, deepened in many respects. Dominant castes retain disproportionate representation across virtually every sector. As traditional caste-based occupations have declined, many from Backward Classes have been pushed into wage labour and gig work, even as dominant-caste groups have accumulated vast wealth by controlling natural resources and government policy, some rising to billionaire status. In a country marked by such severe economic, social, and political inequality, it is no exaggeration to say that without even the reservations currently in place, historically oppressed communities would have essentially no representation at all.
Q4: Even with reservation, is BC/OBC representation actually proportionate to their population?
This is exactly the question that needs scrutiny. How well are OBCs represented in senior Group A and Group B central government positions? In decision-making roles? Among university faculty? In the higher judiciary? On the boards of public-sector institutions? The fact that "reservation exists" tells us little; the real question is how much representation it has actually delivered. The government owes the country a comprehensive white paper on the outcomes of reservation policy.
According to data from the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) website, even after 33 years of OBC reservation in central government employment, OBC representation in Group A and Group B posts has still not crossed 22%. The central government needs to explain why. Meanwhile, OBC representation in legislatures remains largely token, and representation of OBCs — as well as SCs and STs — in the judiciary is similarly negligible.
Today, OBC communities are demanding that reservation be made proportionate to their population share, and that the judicially imposed 50% ceiling be lifted through a constitutional amendment. Yet the government has shown little urgency on this front — even as it implemented a 10% EWS reservation for economically weaker sections of dominant castes, who constitute less than 10% of the population. People are rightly asking what notion of social justice this represents, and are demanding that the government explain itself.
Q5: Who benefits from EWS reservation? Shouldn't all economically poor citizens be helped?
Absolutely, they should — through stronger scholarships, fee reimbursements, free coaching, hostels, healthcare, and employment programmes aimed at poverty reduction. But one distinction is crucial: poverty is not the same as social backwardness. Economic poverty is a financial problem. Social backwardness carries an additional, historically rooted burden — a lack of representation, entrenched social discrimination, and a persistent scarcity of opportunity. These two problems cannot be conflated, and reservation was never designed as a poverty-alleviation programme.
When P.V. Narasimha Rao's government first attempted to introduce 10% EWS reservation for poor members of dominant castes in 1991, eight of the nine judges in the Indra Sawhney case struck it down as unconstitutional. Nevertheless, successive governments, determined to secure this benefit for their own communities, eventually pushed through the 103rd Constitutional Amendment, establishing 10% EWS reservation. Yet the parallel demand — to lift the 50% ceiling on OBC/BC reservation through a similar constitutional amendment — has received no comparable attention. The "creamy layer" exclusion, meanwhile, already ensures that more affluent OBCs do not benefit from reservation, and courts have accordingly directed that OBC reservation benefits should flow to the most disadvantaged among them. There is also growing demand — including calls to implement the Rohini Commission's report — for further sub-categorisation to ensure that the most backward among the OBCs receive their fair share.
Q6: If EWS reservation exists, why do we still need caste-based reservation?
EWS reservation is a distinct constitutional mechanism targeting economic backwardness specifically. The 103rd Constitutional Amendment inserted Articles 15(6) and 16(6), establishing a constitutional basis for up to 10% EWS reservation. The Supreme Court, in Janhit Abhiyan v. Union of India (2022), upheld the validity of the 103rd Amendment by a 3:2 majority. But the existence of EWS reservation does nothing to resolve the separate problem of social backwardness. Two distinct problems require two distinct policy responses.
To those opposing reservation: the first cause you should logically be fighting is the removal of EWS reservation. Under this policy, individuals from dominant castes — who make up less than 10% of the population — receive a 10% reservation and are selected for jobs even with lower merit scores than BC, SC, or ST candidates who apply through open competition. Given this, where is the moral standing to invoke "merit" as an argument, or to demand the removal of caste-based reservation? I would urge that the fight against EWS reservation come first. The rest of the conversation can follow after that.
Q7: Should reservation continue forever, or should it have a time limit?
No social policy should continue indefinitely without periodic scrutiny. But before removing any such policy, it must be evaluated rigorously, using data: What is the current level of representation in education? In government employment, across Groups A through D? What are admission rates and dropout rates in higher education? How many beneficiaries are first-generation graduates? How much social discrimination still persists? How are benefits distributed across various BC sub-castes? Once such data confirms genuine equality has been achieved, revisiting reservation policy would be entirely reasonable. But removing reservation before that equality is achieved is not a solution — it is a retreat.
The Indian Constitution does not, in fact, impose any time limit on reservation in education or employment; it requires that reservation continue for as long as discrimination persists. The only reservation subject to an explicit time limit is SC/ST reservation in legislatures, which carries a ten-year sunset clause — one that Parliament has renewed through constitutional amendment every decade since independence.
Q8: "Without reservation, everyone would compete on equal terms" — is that true?
Does everyone genuinely start from the same point? Can a few years of reservation meaningfully offset the social and economic conditions produced by thousands of years of caste discrimination? The honest answer is no. The competition itself may be a single, unified contest, but the circumstances participants bring to that competition are anything but equal. One competitor may carry generations of accumulated educational capital; another may be the first in their family to set foot on a university campus. One may have access to coaching; another may have studied while working as a labourer. When the starting line is this unequal, declaring "everyone is equal" at the finish line is not substantive equality — it is a convenient fiction.
Q9: Does reservation hold back national development?
The claim that reservation stalls national development does not withstand scrutiny. If it were true, Tamil Nadu — which has maintained 69% reservation for decades — should be among India's most backward states. Instead, it consistently ranks among the country's most developed. How is that possible under the "reservation harms development" theory? What genuinely drives national development is good schools, quality higher education, employment, skill-building, research, industrial investment, and equal opportunity. Blaming reservation alone for developmental shortfalls is a convenient misdirection from the real issues.
Q10: What about reservation in the private sector?
India's central government employs roughly 4 million people; state governments combined account for perhaps another 6 million — a total of no more than around 10 million public-sector jobs nationwide. The private sector, by contrast, offers 20 to 30 times as many jobs. Even within that limited pool of roughly 10 million public-sector positions, about half are filled through open competition, leaving only around 5 million posts subject to reservation at all.
Given this scale, it is worth asking why 50% reservation for communities suppressed for millennia has provoked such intense resentment among dominant-caste groups — when those same groups benefited, unquestioned, from millennia of caste and varna-based privilege without anyone demanding an accounting of the injustice done to others. If today's Constitution, built on principles of equal opportunity and social justice, offers historically oppressed communities even this modest measure of relief, why has that relief become such a source of resentment? Is reservation truly India's most pressing national problem? I would ask the "Reservation Hatao" movement to reflect seriously on this.
Begin by reading India's history closely. Understand how caste and varna hierarchies subjected these communities to centuries of exploitation and suppression. Understand the spirit in which the Constitution was written, and why it placed reservation among the fundamental rights. Build a genuine understanding of inclusive development and social justice — and only then decide whether to mobilise. Do not let yourselves be used as instruments by political parties opposed to reservation on other grounds. If this country is to develop on the foundations of social justice and equality, these constitutional protections must remain in place until social discrimination itself is eliminated.
To those calling for the removal of reservation: within a hierarchical social structure built on the very foundations of caste, what alternative path would you propose to achieve real equality? If a better route to social equality exists in this country beyond reservation, name it.
A Closing Word
Criticising reservation policy is not, in itself, wrong. But criticism needs historical grounding. Argument needs data. "Merit" needs a proper definition. And claims of equality need to be tested against social reality. If reservation is to be removed, then caste discrimination must be removed first. If reservation is to be removed, equal representation must be achieved first. If reservation is to be removed, social inequality must be eliminated first. Only then can we build, together, a society that no longer needs reservation at all.
"Not 'Remove Reservation' — but 'Remove Inequality.'" That should be our slogan.
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