Law ministry's views sought on quotas for Muslims

1:12 AM in

 The ministry of minority affairs has sought the law ministry's opinion on reservation for the Muslims under the category of socially and educationally backward classes.

Minorities affairs minister Salman Khursheed on Thursday stated this while citing the findings and recommendations of the Ranganath Misra Commission and the suggestions made by the Sachar Committee report. "We have to look at how to do it. We believe that the element of affirmative action in OBC reservation needs to be rationalized to include all deprived classes. The matter is in the Supreme Court for Andhra Pradesh. There are different models for different states like Karnataka, Kerala and West Bengal. We need to find what's suitable at a national level," Khursheed said.

The Rangnath Misra Commission had recommended 15% reservation for Muslims in education and employment, and an 8.4% quota for the community in the proposed 27% OBC reservation. The Sachar Committee report had talked about increasing the quota for providing equal opportunities.

Caste-based reservation is anathema to several sections in the Muslim community. Also, it runs afoul of the Constitution when reservation is talked about along religious lines.

In May, several Muslim organizations in Hyderabad had sought a fatwa from the city's seminaries against the government's proposal for a caste-based reservation for the community, arguing that Muslims across the world are equal, and there is no distinction on caste, complexion or racial lines.

Khursheed's reference to the Sachar report comes at a time when the minister himself has said it is not "divine like the Quran", and is open to analysis and criticism. Rakesh Basant, a professor of IIM-Ahmedabad, has also recently flayed UPA's "selective" implementation of the report for narrow political gains.

Though Khursheed glossed over the "political gains", he reiterated that he has all along insisted on renaming the ministry to equal opportunities and minority affairs.

"So far as Sachar in concerned I had only said that a critical examination of our own implementation process must go on. I am for renaming of the ministry because merely naming it minority affairs is taking too narrow a view," the minister added.