Can AP quota model work?
For BSP supremo and Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati, it was the perfect political salvo to fire — a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh seeking reservation for Muslims — as UP heads into a poll year. After all, with nearly one-fifth of UP’s population belonging to the minority community, Ms Mayawati had decided to wield the perfect political weapon — quotas and, thus, vote-bank politics.
In doing so, she appears to have once again revived the issue of religion-based quotas in the country. Ever since the report of the Ranganath Misra Commission which recommended quotas for dalit Muslims and Christians in education and employment (tabled in Parliament in December 2009) several Muslim and Christian leaders as well as organisation have been vociferously demanding that this recommendation be implemented.
UPA-2, well aware that the report’s implementation could open a Pandora’s box, has been holding its suggestions in abeyance.
However, Union law minister Salman Khurshid has been recently quoted as reiterating that the government may consider giving reservations based on the model in force in Andhra Pradesh.
Activist and National Integration Council (NIC) member Navaid Hamid is in favour of religion-based quotas.
However, he believes quotas should be for all, not just for the minorities. “It’s high time that the country thought of proportional representation for all communities, irrespective of their caste and religion,” he says.
He argues thus in favour of religion-based quotas: “India has failed to ensure an equitable share in the fruits of power and development to minorities, particularly Muslims. In fact, the country has failed to ensure this share to even those under the SC category who were accorded reservation.”
Veteran Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader Lok Sabha MP Basudeb Acharia says his party, too, is in favour of reservation for minorities.
He cites the example of West Bengal where the then ruling Left Front government gave 10 per cent reservation to Muslim OBCs in January 2010.
While noting that as per a Supreme Court ceiling the quota pie cannot exceed 50 per cent, Mr Acharia said, “While reservation cannot be provided on the basis of religion, it can be provided on the basis of socio-economic and educational backwardness and the Ranganath Misra Commission had suggested the same.”
However, as politicians and political parties vie with each other in extolling the virtues of quotas, the BJP has been arguing against religion-based reservations.
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