(FE)
The Haryana government might have successfully convinced the Jat leadership to call off its agitation for now, but neither the state nor the central government seems to have any plan other than fanning the flames by continuing to promise reservations. There is no case for Jat reservations as the community cannot be considered backward, and an even smaller chance of getting this past the courts; and, to the extent the reservations happen, this will trigger more violence as groups that get left/squeezed out will feel the need to agitate—by not coming up with a plan to end reservations, both the state and central governments are causing a ratcheting up of the demand for reservations.
In 2013, when the UPA was pushing this, it asked the National Commission on Backward Castes (NCBC) for a recommendation. Despite NCBC saying, in February 2014, Jats “as a class cannot be treated as a backward class”, the UPA went ahead and notified this the following month—a year later, the Supreme Court (SC )struck this down saying that while only the most distressed should get reservations, “any other inclusions would be a serious abdication of the constitutional duty of the State”. It also spoke of the need to move “away from caste-centric definition of backwardness”.
