Written by Maulshree SethLucknow | October 6, 2025 05:55 AM IST 4 min readSBSP chief and Uttar Pradesh Panchayati Raj and Minority Welfare Minister Om Prakash RajbharSuheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party (SBSP) president and Uttar Pradesh minister Om Prakash Rajbhar has asked his NDA alliance partner BJP that the Social Justice Committee’s recommendations to divide the 27 per cent Other Backward Class (OBC) reservation into three groups be implemented before the 2026 state panchayat elections.The move comes at a time when both the BJP and Opposition parties are making attempts to make inroads into the “most backward classes” in UP ahead of the 2027 Assembly elections.Rajbhar, who holds the Panchayati Raj and Minority Welfare portfolio, has written letters not only to the NDA allies but also to the Opposition parties, including Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, Bahujan Samaj Party supremo Mayawati and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief Lalu Prasad Yadav, asking them to make their stance clear on the issue.The SBSP chief gave a 15-day ultimatum to the parties, warning that the failure to respond to his letters will lead to a “movement across the state and elsewhere” where his party will inform people as to how these parties were choosing to maintain a silence on the issue.It was in his letter to BJP president JP Nadda that the SBSP chief sought implementation of the committee’s recommendations ahead of the upcoming 2026 panchayat elections in UP.He wrote in the letter, “In the year 2001, the Social Justice Committee was formed in Uttar Pradesh under the chairmanship of Hukum Singh with the intention of dividing the 27% reservation available to the Other Backward Classes in Uttar Pradesh and providing the benefit of reservation to all the remaining deprived castes of the backward classes.”The BJP led by Rajnath Singh was in government in Uttar Pradesh when the committee was formed.Story continues below this adWhile the committee prepared its detailed report and presented it to the government, the tenure of the then Uttar Pradesh government ended, due to which its report could not be implemented in the state, he added.“Then the governments of Bahujan Samaj Party and Samajwadi Party were in power in Uttar Pradesh till 2017, but neither divided the 27% reservation nor implemented the report of the Social Justice Committee, due to which only some castes of the backward classes continued to get most of the benefits of reservation while the remaining backward castes remained deprived of it,” he claimed in the letter.“In 2017, the BJP again formed government in UP and constituted a three-member Social Justice Committee under the chairmanship of Justice Raghvendra Singh (Retd) for the purpose. In its detailed report submitted to the government, the committee suggested that the 27% reservation given to the backward classes should be divided into three parts — 7% to backward classes, 9% to the most backward classes, and 11% to the utmost backward classes,” Rajbhar said in the letter.Also, he reminded that he had joined the BJP-led government in UP in 2017 only on this demand and had later distanced his party from the allies following the government’s failure to implement it. He again joined the NDA alliance hoping to get the recommendations implemented, he added.Story continues below this adIn an interaction with mediapersons, Rajbhar said the response to his letter would make it clear whether all the parties having stake in UP are actually well-wishers of the “most backward classes” or only want to do politics in their name.As of now, the political parties in the state are weighing their options since the NISHAD party is also demanding inclusion of some of the “most backward communities” in the Scheduled Caste (SC) list.Stay updated with the latest - Click here to follow us on Instagram© The Indian Express Pvt LtdTags:UP panchayat elections