MUMBAI: Former chief minister Devendra Fadnavis and his party, the BJP, were responsible for the current impasse over quota for Other Backward Class (OBC) communities in local body elections in Maharashtra, Congress claimed on Saturday.
Speaking to reporters here, state Congress chief Nana Patole also said that the BJP's sympathy and concern for the OBCs was a sham.
The Supreme Court on Wednesday disapproved of the Maharashtra government's decision to delay the election to over 2,400 local bodies pending delimitation exercise, and set a deadline of two weeks for the state election commission to notify elections.
The apex court had earlier set aside OBC quota in these elections, as the state could not furnish necessary data.
"Devendra Fadnavis and BJP are trying to put the blame for OBC reservation situation on the Maha Vikas Aghadi government. They are asking what the MVA government did for two years...what did the Fadnavis government do for five years? Why didn't they form a commission (on OBC quota)? Why did Fadnavis, who claims that there were numerous errors in the empirical data, ask the Modi government for data? And why is the Modi government using the same data to implement government schemes?" Patole asked.
"The BJP's DNA is anti-OBC, and the love and concern it is showing for OBCs is fake," he alleged.
Under the previous BJP-led government, Zilla Parishad elections were embroiled in court cases and in 2018 the high court directed that a commission should be set up on OBC quota, but "the Fadnavis government did not take a decision on it," he claimed.
The present Shiv Sena-NCP-Congress `Maha Vikas Aghadi' government moved the Supreme Court, but the Union government refused to provide required data on OBCs as it wanted to put the state government in a spot, the Congress leader alleged.
Patole also claimed that in Madhya Pradesh, when a similar issue of OBC reservations arose, the Modi government stood by the state government, but it did not help Maharashtra as it has a non-BJP government.