Jat community requests PM Narendra Modi to consider reservation appeal

Haryana's Agriculture Minister OP Dhankar on Thursday said members of the Jat community have requested Prime Minister Narendra Modi to consider their reservation appeal. "The meeting was held in a very healthy environment. The Jat community has put forward three major demands to the Prime Minister. They have requested him to keep the decision regarding reservation, to come on the 17th of this month, as it is," said Dhankar.

"We have demanded that the benefits that Jat community students and people have got in their jobs should not be harmed. The other request that we put before him is that it should be processed in the backward class commission," he added.

"We have requested him that the way other communities, Ahir and Gujjars, have been given reservation, the Jat community should also be put in that category, as we are no better than them," Dhankar further added. Earlier this month, the Supreme Court stated that caste cannot be the sole ground for reservation and quashed the Jat notification of the reservation bill.

The former UPA Government had announced reservation for Jats in 2014 by including them in the OBC category on the eve of the Lok Sabha elections. However, a group of petitioners claimed that Jats were 'politically and socially' advanced and that the decision to extend reservation to them was electorally motivated.