It’s a familiar script. A government headed towards elections makes a bold proposal for extending reservation to a group that doesn’t yet have it, and then after the elections, the proposal falls by the wayside or gets struck down.

We’ve seen it in 1996 when the government sought to extend SC status to the Scheduled Caste converts to Christianity, and we’ve seen it in 2014 when the government notified Jats as OBC in 9 states.