State-Level OBC Reservation Policies in India

Long before the Mandal Commission brought OBC reservation into national headlines in 1990, several Indian states had already built their own systems to uplift backward communities. The story of OBC reservation is, at heart, a story of states acting first and the Centre catching up much later. The southern states moved decades ahead of the rest, while northern states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar joined the movement only in the 1970s after dedicated commissions studied the question. Understanding these state-level policies is essential to grasping why reservation looks so different from one part of the country to another.

Why states led the way on OBC reservation 🔗

Reservation for Other Backward Classes did not begin with a single national decision. Instead, it grew out of regional social movements and state-level political will. The Constitution, through Articles 15(4), 16(4) and 46, gave states the room to make special provisions for socially and educationally backward classes. Article 16(4) specifically allows a state to reserve appointments for any backward class that, in its opinion, is not adequately represented in public services.

This wording is important. It placed the responsibility and the discretion with the states. As a result, the timeline and design of OBC reservation depended heavily on local history, the strength of caste-based social reform movements, and the political balance in each region. Where lower-caste mobilisation was strong and early, reservation came early. Where it was weak or arrived late, the policy followed much later.

The southern states as pioneers 🔗

The four southern states of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka were the clear pioneers of OBC reservation. Right after Independence, OBC quotas were limited to these four states because South India had a far longer history of anti-caste social movements.

The Justice Party and the first reservation 🔗

The roots of backward class reservation lie in the old Madras Presidency. The very term “backward classes” goes back to the 1870s, when the British administration grouped lower-caste communities together for the purpose of affirmative action. By the early twentieth century, non-Brahmin communities were demanding fair representation in administration, where forward castes dominated almost completely.

This frustration gave birth to the South India People’s Association, which later became the Justice Party. In 1921, the first Justice Party government passed a Communal Government Order, making it the first elected body in Indian legislative history to legislate reservations. Around the same period, the princely state of Mysore also began reservations for backward castes after a long social justice movement against the dominance of non-Brahmin castes.

By 1927, the Madras Presidency had introduced a detailed communal order. The Presidency provided 44% reservation to non-Brahmin Hindus, 16% to Brahmins, Muslims, Christians and Anglo-Indians, and 8% to Scheduled Castes. These early measures laid the moral and administrative foundation on which post-Independence policies were built.

Tamil Nadu and the commission tradition 🔗

Tamil Nadu carried this legacy forward more vigorously than any other state. After Independence, the state continued expanding backward class quotas through a series of commissions. The Sattanathan Commission, formed in 1971, studied the position of backward classes and recommended ideas that were ahead of their time, including a separate category for Most Backward Classes and the concept of a creamy layer. Over the decades, successive governments raised the share for OBCs, and today the state maintains roughly 69% total reservation, well above the national norm, a position it has held since the 1990s.

The northern states catch up in the 1970s 🔗

While the South had moved decisively, the large northern states lagged behind for decades. This was largely because lower-caste social movements there were weaker and developed later. The breakthrough came in the 1970s, when two key states, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, set up dedicated commissions to study backwardness and recommend reservation. This decade saw a wave of such bodies across the country, suggesting that many states understood social inequality better and acted before the Centre did.

The Chhedi Lal Sathi Commission in Uttar Pradesh 🔗

In Uttar Pradesh, the demand for backward class rights found a determined voice in Chhedi Lal Sathi. Under pressure from him, the state government led by Chief Minister Hemvati Nandan Bahuguna constituted a Backward Classes Commission, and Sathi was appointed its chairman on 31 October 1975.

This was probably the first body to closely examine the extremely backward castes across the entire state. The commission submitted its report on 17 May 1977 and recommended a total of 29.5% reservation for backward classes, divided into three groups. The first group of landless farmers and unskilled labourers was to receive 17%, the second group of artisans and farmers 10%, and a third group of backward Muslim castes 2.5%. The careful internal division showed an early awareness that “backward classes” were not a single uniform block but contained layers of disadvantage.

The Mungeri Lal Commission in Bihar 🔗

Bihar’s journey followed a similar path. On 23 December 1971, under Chief Minister Bhola Paswan Shastri, the state set up a Backward Classes Commission with Mungeri Lal as its chairman. The commission compiled its own list of Other Backward Classes and Most Backward Classes, weighing factors such as social status, educational backwardness and representation in government service.

The commission identified backward communities and clearly recognised that the Most Backward Classes were far behind the upper OBCs. It recommended quotas across different categories of government jobs, including 25% in Group A and higher shares in lower groups, with the deliberate aim of pushing backward class members beyond just low-level posts.

Putting these recommendations into practice proved politically explosive. Bihar adopted reservation for backward castes in 1978, when the socialist leader Karpoori Thakur implemented the Mungeri Lal report. His decision triggered fierce backlash from upper-caste youth and was mocked as a daydream, but it cemented his place as a champion of social justice and earned him the title Jan Nayak, hero of the people.

The significance of the MBC idea 🔗

One of the most important contributions of these northern commissions was the recognition of Most Backward Classes or Extremely Backward Classes within the larger OBC group. The Mungeri Lal Commission, like the Sattanathan Commission in the South, understood that benefits could be captured by the relatively stronger castes within the OBC fold, leaving the weakest behind. This insight continues to shape state politics today, especially in Bihar, where mobilising artisan and extremely backward castes has become a major electoral strategy.

The constitutional ceiling and its tension with state policy 🔗

State-level reservation did not develop without legal limits. The defining constraint came from the Supreme Court. In the landmark 1992 Indra Sawhney v. Union of India case, also called the Mandal verdict, a nine-judge bench laid down the rules that still govern reservation today.

The Court ruled that total reservations should not exceed 50% and that the creamy layer must be excluded from backward class benefits. This 50% ceiling created a direct tension with several states that had already crossed it. Tamil Nadu, with its long history and roughly 69% reservation, protected its higher quota through special legal arrangements. More recently, the Patna High Court in 2024 struck down Bihar’s attempt to raise reservation from 50% to 65%, showing that the friction between state ambition and the constitutional cap is far from resolved.

Where state policy stands today 🔗

The result of this long history is a patchwork. Every state now provides some level of OBC reservation in public employment, but the percentages, sub-categories and rules vary widely. Some states divide their OBC quota into multiple tiers, separating ordinary backward classes from the most backward. Others add special provisions for nomadic communities, denotified groups or specific castes. This diversity is a direct reflection of the fact that the policy grew from the ground up, state by state, rather than being imposed uniformly from above.

Why this history still matters 🔗

The state-led story of OBC reservation explains a great deal about contemporary Indian politics. It shows that affirmative action in India was not a top-down gift from the Centre but the product of decades of regional struggle. The southern states demonstrated what was possible, the northern commissions of the 1970s expanded the idea across the Hindi belt, and the eventual national Mandal moment of 1990 built on foundations the states had already laid. Reservation remains one of the most debated topics in public life, and understanding its origins at the state level helps cut through the noise of present-day controversy.

What do you think? Should states have the freedom to set their own reservation levels based on local social realities, even if that means crossing the 50% ceiling set by the Supreme Court? And given that commissions decades ago already identified the need to separate the Most Backward Classes from stronger OBCs, has India done enough to ensure that the weakest communities actually receive the benefits meant for them?

References

1. https://www.thenewsminute.com/tamil-nadu/how-tamil-nadu-s-reservation-stands-69-despite-50-quota-cap-146116
2. https://www.ideasforindia.in/topics/social-identity/is-obc-reservation-good-for-development
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reservation_in_India
4. https://vajiramandravi.com/upsc-exam/reservation-part-i/
5. https://obcrights.org/blog/reservation/backward-class-commissions-proof-that-social-equality-was-never-achieved/
6. https://www.forwardpress.in/2018/12/chedi-lal-sathi-bahujans-ideological-warrior/
7. https://www.forwardpress.in/2025/10/how-the-heart-of-mungeri-lal-commissions-report-ached-for-obcs-and-ebcs/
8. http://indpaedia.com/ind/index.php/Caste-based_reservations,_India_(history)
9. https://blog.ipleaders.in/indra-sawhney-v-union-of-india-and-ors-1992-case-analysis/
10. https://www.scobserver.in/journal/an-opportunity-for-the-court-to-reconsider-the-50-percent-reservation-ceiling-of-indra-sawhney/