The countdown for the Rajasthan assembly election has begun, as reflected in the recently held mega rally of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Bhilwara, where his main focus was to lure the Gujjar community, a dominant OBC within the BJP fold in order to win the upcoming Rajasthan assembly election whereas the Congress has just started its "Hath se Hath Jodo" campaign after the successful completion of the "Bharat Jodo Yatra".

Away from these high-profile campaigns and media glamour, a movement for OBCs is growing in the southern Rajasthan districts of Banswara and Dungarpur for a caste census and reservation for OBCs in Tribal Subplan (TSP) areas where OBCs do not enjoy reservation. Tribal Subplan (TSP) is a strategy formulated for Scheduled Areas for the rapid socio-economic development of the region and they follow a slightly different set of governance models and rules and regulations.

The TSP areas follow a different reservation scheme unlike the rest of the state, where 45% of the seats are reserved for Scheduled Tribes (ST) and 5% are reserved for Scheduled Castes (SC), and the remaining 50% of seats are open to everyone.

In the present scheme of reservation in TSP areas in Rajasthan, only STs and SCs are getting the benefits of reservation for all direct recruitment except state services and OBC and EWS reservation is not enforced for these recruitments. As a result the OBC communities and organisations such as OBC Adhikar Manch contend that this scheme of reservation goes against their constitutional rights which they enjoy in non-TSP areas and that they are not only bereft of reservation in TSP areas but also deprived of other such benefits such as age relaxation and percentage relaxation that they enjoyed in non-TSP areas.

Their demand had been pending for a long time but with the implementation of EWS quota that exceeds the 50% reservation threshold that was set by the apex court in the Indra Sawhney judgement, they intensified their demand for reserving seats for OBCs in TSP areas of Rajasthan. Many among them are asking for reservations proportionate to their population and conducting caste censuses in Rajasthan for fair quota benefits.

In TSP areas, OBCs are the second largest group after Scheduled Tribes and can influence the outcomes of many assembly constituencies. Various OBC organizations, claimed that with the division of tribal votes in TSP areas among the Bharatiya Tribal Party (BTP), BJP, and INC, OBCs are going to play a decisive role in almost 17 to 18 assembly seats that fall in TSP areas and are reserved for ST candidates. Fearing the negative consequences of this, many local MLAs have raised their concerns in the Rajasthan assembly, including Ramlal Meena of the INC from the Pratapgarh assembly constituency and BTP MLA Rajkumar Roat, who raised the issue of population-based reservation in TSP areas, including reserving seats for OBCs but none of the major parties, including the INC and BJP, have taken a clear stand on the matter fearing it may backfire just before the assembly election.

Irrespective of whether their demand is met or not, OBCs are emerging as the main plank in the upcoming Rajasthan assembly election and only time will tell which party managed to lure OBCs of the TSP area into their fold.