Although the carving of a sub-quota for backward Muslims is dominating the campaign for the UP elections, it seems that the UPA at the Centre and the Mayawati government in the state have paid little attention to the two crucial orders passed by the Supreme Court in July last year, permitting states to enact laws to extend reservation beyond the 50 per cent limit fixed by it in the Mandal Commission verdict of 1993.
A bench of Chief Justice S.H. Kapadia and Justices K.S. Radhakrishnan and Swatanter Kumar, in two important orders passed on July 13, 2011, had virtually shed the 17-year-long rigid stance of the top court on 50 per cent cap on reservation by permitting the states to “revisit” their reservation policy. The only condition imposed in the orders by the court was that the states have to collect “a solid scientific data” to justify their decision.
As per the top court orders, the “quantified data” so collected by the states on the socially and educationally backwardness of a section of the society has to be placed before the backward class commission for processing and follow up action by the state governments to “revisit” the reservtion policy if the data was found to be correct.
However, the election rehtorics in UP on the quota for Muslims, which has led to a virtual confrontation between the Election Commision and some top leaders of the Congress, has given an impression that neither the Centre, nor the BSP government in the state has cared to go into the top court orders to collect the relevant data.
The top court passed the orders in the cases related to Tamil Nadu and Karnataka laws passed in 1993 and 1994 respectively increasing reservation to 69 and 73 per cent in a bid to “overreach” the Mandal Commission verdict fixing a cap of 50 per cent on total reservation.
In fact the Andhra Pradesh’s recent law providing four per cent quota to the socially and educationally backward classes (SEBC) among Muslims had run into legal wrangle as the AP high court had quashed it on the ground that the legislation was not bakced by “solid data”. The case is is now pending before the Supreme Court.
While Tamil Nadu was able to implemented its law increasing quota limit to 69 per cent as its legislation was placed in “Ninth Schedule” of the Constitu-tion, protecting it from judicial review, Karnataka did not have such protection. The SC had found that the laws passed by the two states were not backed by any “data” on the backward classes.
Had the UPA at the Centre and the BSP government in UP taken a cue from the SC orders regarding collecting “solid data” on the SEBC Muslims, the current controversy and the “face-off” with the EC by some leaders could have been avoided. This would also have saved the parties pitching for reservation to the Muslims from the “embrassing” questions from OBCs how it could be provided from their 27 per cent block.
Several legal experts are of the view that if a solid data so collected baks the increase in reservation beyond 50 per cent in any state, the job of political parties supporting it would have become easier in UP elections to offer the quota to SEBC Muslims outside the OBC block of 27 per cent.