Jats in nine states to get reservation benefit

The government on Sunday decided to include the Jat community in the  central list of Other Backward Class (OBC’s) in nine states, a move that is expected to benefit about nine crore people from the community.

The decision would pave the way for the community members to avail benefits of reservation in central government jobs and central education institutions as per the existing norms.

"Union Cabinet on Sunday approved the inclusion of the Jat community in the Central list of OBCs for the states of Bihar, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttarrakhand, Uttar Pradesh and the National capital territory of Delhi," I&B Minister Manish Tewari told reporters. An approximate number of nine crore Jats are living in nine states -- Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Uttarakhand and Bihar.

The Jat people are a community of traditionally non-elite tillers and herders in Northern India and Pakistan. Originally pastoralists in the lower Indus river-valley of Sindh, Jats migrated north into the Punjab region in late medieval times, and subsequently into the Delhi Territory, northeastern Rajputana, and the western Gangetic Plain in the 17th and 18th centuries. Of Muslim, Sikh, and Hindu faiths, they now live mostly in the Indian states of Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh and the Pakistani provinces of Sindh and Punjab.

Traditionally involved in peasantry, the Jats took up arms against the Mughal Empire during the late 17th and early 18th centuries. The community played an important role in the development of the martial Khalsa panthan of Sikhism. The Hindu Jat kingdom reached its zenith under Suraj Mal of Bharatpur (1707–1763). By the 20th century, the landowning Jats became an influential group in several parts of North India, including Punjab, Western Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Haryana and Delhi. Over the years, several Jats abandoned agriculture in favour of urban jobs, and used their dominant economic and political status to claim higher social status.