Its enormous loss in Bihar had halted the BJP from getting close to the majority despite it doing relatively well in Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Rajasthan and also Uttar Pradesh. The BJP was wiped out from the state while the Congress won the Begusarai and Sasaram seats.
Still, the Janata Dal under Lalu’s stewardship won 49 out of the 54 Lok Sabha seats in united Bihar. The Congress, the Janata Dal and its splinter parties were in disarray. The only party that looked strong, under L.K. Rahul and Priyanka were too small to think of politics. Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated in the middle of the 1991 elections. The Chandra Shekhar government had fallen, necessitating mid-term polls in 1991. Today discussions are on about who will be the next prime minister or an alternative to Narendra Modi.īut the non-BJP parties were in the worse shape then. The period also saw the emergence of Mulayam Singh Yadav, who was a champion of the Mandal Commission in Uttar Pradesh.īut Bihar under Lalu became one state in which the BJP failed to take off in the 1991 Lok Sabha polls. However, Advani’s move backfired in Bihar, with then chief minister Lalu Prasad Yadav getting him arrested and in the process emerging as the hero of disadvantaged classes. Advani embarked on the Ram Rathyatra from Somenath to Ayodhya during the period of the stay to divert the agitating backward classes towards the “movement” to build Ram temple at Ayodhya. The Bharatiya Janata Party didn’t overtly oppose it but its party president L.K. The Supreme Court’s interim stay had given momentary relief to the protestors. Thakur’s move had put the backward castes and upper castes at war against each other. Bihar had emerged an epicentre of the job quota movement with the Janata Party chief minister Karpoori Thakur implementing reservation for the OBCs and the extremely backward classes (EBCs) in 1977-78 on the formula enunciated by Nitish Kumar – then a young but erudite Socialist leader. Secondly, the Mandal Commission which had been constituted in 1979 by the Indira Gandhi government was headed by the then MP from Madhepura Lok Sabha seat in Bihar, B.P. The apex court introduced the concept of the “creamy layer”, prohibiting the affluent sections from taking advantage of the quota, but rejected the plea for the economically poor on the ground that the “Constitution has stipulated quota on the basis of social and educational backwardness”. It recommended excluding the well-off segments of the OBCs to deliver better justice to the deserving strata in the OBCs, and also 10% quota to the economically poor among the upper castes. Singh cabinet’s decision to give a 27% quota to the other backward classes (OBCs) in government jobs.Īlso read: The Point Is That There Is Not Enough Social Justice, Not That There Is Too Muchīy that time, the P.V. But after almost 1.5 years, in 1992, the apex court validated the V.P. Soon after its implementation, the opponents of the Mandal Commission report had moved the Supreme Court, which put an interim stay on its implementation. There are striking similarities between the political situations then and now. Singh had emerged as a villain for the upper castes and a proverbial ‘messiah’ for the backward classes, which as per the report constituted 52% of India’s population. North India – mainly the Hindi heartland – witnessed widespread protest against the move, with students from the upper castes committing self-immolation, patrolling the streets and setting trains and buses on fire. The then prime minister announced this formally in his Independence Day speech on August 15, 1990, setting off upheaval in the country.
Singh-led Union cabinet had decided to implement the report of the Socially and Educationally Backward Classes Commission (SEBC), commonly known as the Mandal Commission, on August 13, 1990. The government was about to get the final report on the survey on May 15 and table it in the state legislature in its monsoon session. The order has also asked the government to ensure that the data collected is “secured” and not shared with anyone till the final order. The high court on Thursday put an interim stay on the ongoing survey that was scheduled to be completed on May 15. The Patna high court’s order staying the caste-based survey in Bihar appears to have shocked the ruling Mahagathbandhan – mainly the Rashtriya Janata Dal and the Janata Dal (United) – but also holds the potential to revive the ‘Mandal Magic’ that altered the course of Indian politics in the 1990s.
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