After assuming office in May 2007, the Mayawati government decided that entrepreneurs seeking any facility for setting up industrial or business units in the state would have to reserve 10 per cent of posts each for SCs, OBCs and the poor belonging to minorities and the upper castes.

“The new policy would not only apply to industrial units but also to trading houses, business ventures, disinvested units as well as educational institutions that have sought concessions like subsidised land, tax holidays or any other grant or special rebate either directly or indirectly from the state,” a cabinet note had stated then.

It is a different matter altogether that none could benefit from the policy as no industry invested in the state and all PPP projects of the Mayawati government remain grounded till date. The government officials, though, claim that recently Kanpur Jute Mill, which was lying closed for long and which has been re-opened, has given a written commitment to the government to implement this reservation policy.

In her first letter to the Prime Minister after she assumed office in May 2007, Mayawati asked the Central government to clear the backlog of recruitments on posts reserved for SC/STs and OBCs at the Centre, besides implementing the reservation in the private sector. “The government has sent three to four letters to the UPA government with two demands ¿ reservation for economically-weak upper caste and reservation in private sector,” confirmed Navneet Sehgal, the secretary to Chief Minister. In fact, even in a meeting with the PM, Mayawati had taken up the issue.

Mayawati had raised the issue of quota in the private sector for the first time in Bangalore in October 2005. At a public meeting, she had said that in the coming Assembly elections in Bihar, Tamil Nadu and Kerala, her party would go to the voter with two issues — land redistribution and reservation in the private sector. “Reservation in the judiciary and in the private sector was the only way to empower Dalits and poor,” she had said.