Author: Vikas Pathak
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: January 21, 2008
URL: http://www.indianexpress.com/story/263618.html
The Delhi High Court has asked the Union Government
to file its reply by February 7 on a PIL seeking a direction against the implementation
of the Sachar Committee report.
According to advocate P N Lekhi, who filed the
PIL on behalf of Patriots' Forum, they sought to know whether the Sachar panel
report had not treated the Muslims in a manner inconsistent with the treatment
given to other recognised minorities; whether it was tainted with the logic
of racial compartmentalisation and communitarianism; whether it did not promise
the rise of political Islam in India in violation of the Constitution; whether
Muslims, who had "ruled" the peninsula, could be treated as a minority;
and whether it did not degenerate into the process initiated by the "pre-August14,1947,
days of collecting Muslims under the banner of Islam".
The Centre had set up Justice Rajinder Sachar
Committee to look into the social, economic and educational status of Muslims
and suggest ways to improve it. Its report was presented to the Parliament on
November 30, 2006.
Lekhi said that any promotion of Muslims as
a religious community would result in "destruction" of the secular
polity promised by the Constitution and was thus against its basic structure.
"The petition wishes to know whether the terms of reference of the Sachar
Committee are not an extension of the Pakistan resolution of 1940 made in Lahore,"
he said. Lekhi claimed that the Sachar report ran contrary to all Supreme Court
judgments on secularism.
Arguing that the Committee's recommendations
were made on an irrational basis, he claimed that the Sachar Committee itself
had said that in nine states the Muslims were educationally more advanced than
other communities.
Patriots' Forum Secretary General R K Ohri told
The Indian Express that the Forum had sent two written representations to the
Sachar panel in October 2005 and May 18, 2006, but got no response. He said
that the panel had ignored four "globally accepted human development indicators
- infant mortality, child mortality, degree of urbanisation, and life expectancy
at birth - where Muslims were better off than Hindus". "Muslims' lower
per capita income is because of higher population growth rate and lower work
participation rates among their women," he claimed. The next hearing has
been fixed for February.
