The Poona Pact followed Mahatma Gandhi’s 1932 fast against separate electorates for the Depressed Classes.
The agreement was signed on 24 September 1932 at Yerwada Central Jail in Poona, now Pune. Gandhi had begun a fast in prison in opposition to the British Communal Award’s proposal for separate electorates for Depressed Classes, a group then subject to severe caste discrimination. Dr. B. R. Ambedkar was a principal negotiator for the Depressed Classes.
The pact replaced separate electorates with reserved seats for these communities within a common Hindu electorate. It increased the number of reserved seats in provincial legislatures compared with the earlier proposal, while preserving joint electorates.
The Poona Pact remains historically significant and debated. It is not the same as the Gandhi-Irwin Pact of 1931, which concerned civil disobedience and political prisoners. The agreement’s terminology also reflects the language used in its own period.