Bhopal, India — Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Mohan Yadav is pushing hard to settle the long-running debate over 27% reservation for Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in state government jobs. On Monday, he met Solicitor General Tushar Mehta in New Delhi and shared the government’s plan to bump up the OBC quota from 14% to 27%.
Yadav posted on X, his official social media account, saying the state team is fully committed to fixing the OBC reservation issue. The timing couldn’t be better—this chat happened just two days before the Supreme Court kicks off daily hearings on September 24 for a stack of petitions from groups like the OBC Mahasabha. Those hearings were originally set for Tuesday, but got pushed back a day.
This effort builds on an all-party meeting Yadav called on August 28, where he brought opposition leaders into the fold to hash out a consensus. It’s a big deal: For the first time in five years, the BJP-led government in Madhya Pradesh is teaming up with rivals to tackle this thorny OBC quota problem.
The whole controversy blew up back in March 2019, when the Congress government under Kamal Nath hiked the OBC reservation from 14% to 27%. That move pushed the total reservations past the 50% cap set by the Supreme Court, sparking chaos. The Madhya Pradesh High Court quickly put a hold on it, and more than 70 petitions flooded in.
Fast forward to 2022: The current government rolled out an 87:13 formula, leaving 13% of posts empty until the courts sort things out. Challengers took that to the High Court, but on January 28 this year, judges turned down those petitions. Just weeks later, on February 13, the state asked the Supreme Court for a speedy hearing on the OBC reservation fight.
Before the 2019 change, Madhya Pradesh stuck to the 50% limit with 14% for OBCs, 20% for Scheduled Tribes (ST), and 16% for Scheduled Castes (SC). The proposed 27% for OBCs would jack that total up to 63%, which is why it’s such a hot-button issue in OBC reservation news across India.
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