The 4.5 per cent reservation for the minorities, which was aggressively pushed by the Congress during the Assembly election campaign in Uttar Pradesh recently, had got into trouble with Chief Election Commissioner S.Y. Quraishi. Now the idea has been interrogated by the Andhra Pradesh high court, which pointed out on Tuesday that religion cannot be a basis for reservations. Union law minister Salman Khurshid, who had drawn the CEC’s ire earlier, has said that the government will take the matter before a Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court. This is logical from the government’s perspective. But the issue cries out for greater clarity. During the Uttar Pradesh campaign, Mr Khurshid especially sought to convince people that “minorities” did not mean just Muslims but also other non-Hindus. This was fair enough as the Congress was being accused of influencing Muslim voters through quota talk by indirectly suggesting that the understanding of the word “minorities” — at least in the UP context — could be reduced to mean Muslims on the whole. So the point really was the use of code language in political or electoral terms.
It may be noted that the Congress was not trying then to dispel the notion in the popular mind that the quota was linked to religious minorities in this particular case. But after the Andhra Pradesh high court delivered its order, Mr Khurshid has been rushing about seeking to impress interlocutors that reservations under the Mandal Commission plan was for sections of the people who were “socially and educationally backward”, and was not linked to religious categories, Hindus or others. This is perfectly valid of course, but one wishes the law minister had underlined it during the election campaign, although doing so might not strictly have served his party’s interest.
In the Mandal scheme, there is a percentage-wise list of communities in every state that indicates which of them may qualify for the 27 per cent reservation set aside for the “backward” category. The Congress’ case is that not enough numbers — in percentage terms — of groups or communities of Muslims characterised as “backward” in various states are getting the benefit of reservations. It is to deal with this lacuna that the party has asked for 4.5 per cent reservation for minority groups that make the “backward” cut anyway. Has the Congress made a detailed study of this matter in every state, not only for the minorities but also for others? The Supreme Court may insist on this before considering the constitutional validity of the law minister’s proposition.