JOIN USThe politics of minority quota
It was yet another blow to the beleaguered United Progressive Alliance government, this time struck by judiciary.
Andhra Pradesh High Court’s order quashing the Centre’s minority sub-quota has only added to the Congress-led coalition’s long list of woes.
In its strong strictures, the high court virtually admonished the Centre’s ‘casual manner’ in carving out 4.5 per cent minority sub-quota from the 27 per cent quota for Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in government jobs and educational institutions.
The 13-page judgement held that the Centre “did not apply its mind” while carving out the controversial sub-quota and scrapped the provision saying reservation cannot be based purely on religious grounds and the decision was “not based on any other intelligible consideration”.Union law and minority affairs minister Salman Khurshid, reacting to the court order, argued that “The word minority has both religious and linguistic (connotation)”.
Why did the government persist with a sub-quota, when the AP HC had struck down the provision four times? The popular argument is that the Congress wanted to lure the Muslim electorate – who constitute 14 per cent of the population – with a quota card ahead of the Uttar Pradesh assembly election. Fifty-four out of 70 districts in UP have a Muslim population exceeding 10 per cent and the rest in excess of 20 per cent.
The Centre, through an Office Memorandum (OM) on December 22, 2011, brought into force the sub-quota (for Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists and Zoroastrians or Parsis), based on the Mandal Commission recommendations notified in 1990, reserving 27 per cent vacancies in civil posts and services under the Central Government for OBCs.
The government also drew from the report of the National Commission for Religious and Linguistic Minorities (NCRLM), headed by Justice Ranganath Mishra, submitted in 2009. The NCRLM report recommended that since minorities - especially Muslims - are under-represented and sometimes wholly unrepresented in government employment, they should be regarded as backward in this respect within the meaning of Article 16(4) of the Constitution.
Importantly, NCRLM observed that the action recommended by them will have full sanction of Article 16(4) of the Constitution. While Muslims constitute about 14 per cent of the Indian population, Christians make up 2.3, Sikhs 1.6, Buddhists 0.8, Jains 0.3 and Parsis a few thousands.
How did the government arrive at the figure of 4.5 per cent? According to a statement by minister Khurshid in Parliament on December 28, 2011, the last caste census in India was held in 1931. “The Mandal Commission extrapolated the figures of 1931 caste census over four decades to state that the OBC population was about 52 per cent, of which 43.60 per cent were Hindu OBCs and 8.40 were non-Hindu. The proportion between the two is currently about 1:5 because the decadal growth of Muslims has been higher compared to Hindus. Therefore, the Government has fixed the sub-quota at 4.5 per cent.”
The high court has asserted that the religions mentioned under the sub-quota “do not form a homogeneous group but a heterogeneous group." It took the stand that “there is a statutorily prescribed mode for identifying backward classes, namely through the National Commission for Backward Classes Act, and therefore that procedure must be mandatorily followed. The Central Government cannot unilaterally add to the list of backward classes nor can it cull out a more backward class group from the list, without reference to the NCBC.” It also held that what the Centre essentially did was to “cull out religious minorities” and “designate” them as more backward among the OBCs.
The court’s ruling followed a Public Interest Litigation filed by R Krishnaiah of AP State Backward Classes Welfare Association. “The central government arbitrarily cut the OBC quota by 4.5 per cent and allotted (this) to minorities as sub-quota, keeping in view the Uttar Pradesh elections. We have no problem if the minorities are given reservation separately, but it should not be at the cost of OBCs,” the PIL contended.
The affected lot
Now, whom does the court order affect most? After the December 2011 OM, 434 seats out of the total 9,647 seats in the 15 IITs, IT-BHU and ISM Dhanbad were reserved for non-creamy-layer OBC minority students. (Under the OBC quota, non-creamy-layer OBCs are those whose parental income is less than Rs 4.5 lakh a year.)
Of them, 325 students were shortlisted. The IITs have now decided to follow the court order and ignore the OM, which means the fate of these students hangs in the balance. “Without the sub-quota, many of them would not have got admission,” says IIT-JEE organising chairman Prof G B Reddy. “But these students can approach the Supreme Court,” notes minister Khurshid.
As for the government, it has decided to challenge the AP HC order in the apex court “at the earliest,” according to Khurshid. The high court order may also jeopardise the move to introduce a sub-quota for Muslims in Delhi's private schools under the 25 per cent seats reservation for economically weaker sections, as envisaged in the Right to Education Act.
There is, however, no information yet on the number of jobs secured under the new quota.
Says Najaf Haider, professor of history at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi: “I have witnessed the problem for a long time. The Muslim community is very backward. Something needs to be done. Just because they belong to a religious minority, they should not be deprived of any positive discrimination. Many recognise the problem but do not know how to frame a policy which can withstand legal scrutiny.
Pitiable state
It is hard to disagree with Haider. The Sachar Committee appointed by the Prime Minister to study the social, economic and educational status of Muslims, in its report stated that Muslims were worse off than Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes and their overall percentage in bureaucracy was just 2.5 per cent.
Some experts believe that such a quota could have been carved out by a Equal Opportunities Commission recommended by the Sachar Committee.
The loss of face to the government, the inconvenience caused to the students, among other things, could have been avoided had there been a well-thought out procedure to give the much needed uplift to the most backward among the minorities.
There is no denying the pitiable state of affairs of a majority of the Muslim community and that they desperately need a better deal.
The court has exposed several lacunae which should be an eye-opener to the government. It is now for the government to sit with lawmakers and legal experts to correct the wrong rather than tread an egoistic path.
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