A commission for upliftment of social and education wise backward class in Gujarat was formed on 20th April under retired High Court Judge C.V.Rane.
The Rane commission gave its report on 31 October 1983, in which two main recommendetions were made:
1. OBC and other 63 socially and education wise backward classes should be considered eligible for government jobs under reserved quota.
2. To implement this, 18% reservation should be added to (then) existing 31% reservation. Thus the total percentage of reservation should be 49%.
The commission clearly had made a recommendation that those having maximum annual income of Rs 10,000 only should get the benefits of this.
Madhavsinh Solanki delayed the implementation of commission’s recommendation for 14 months and apparently to take benefits in elections when the assembly elections were announced, he announced the Rane commission report and added that his government would implement it.
Madhavsinh govt announced to increase the reservation percentage as per the Rane commission report, but at the same time it refused to consider the other recommendation of Rane commission that only those earning less than Rs 10,000 annually should get benefits of reservation.
This sparked anger in February 1985. After an interval for assembly elections(March 1985), the anger turned into a full scale agitation. Madhavsinh made an announcement to postpone the execution of Rane report for one year, but the situation went out of control Army was called, PM and Union Home Minister had to visit Amdavad, 23 houses were burnt to ashes in Dabgarwad area of Amdavad. In total, during the Anamat riots 180 were dead, 6000 displaced, 1600 incidents of arson were registered, Rs 2200 crore loss was witnessed.
Gujarat Vidhansabha 