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Author: Akhilesh Suman
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: May 22, 2007
Ranganath Misra roots for quota within quota
A fresh round of quota controversy is in the offing. The National Commission for Linguistic and Religious Minorities headed by Justice Ranganath Misra has recommended quota within quota for OBC minorities and reservation to Dalit minorities under Scheduled Caste category.
Commission chairman Justice Misra and members, Professor Tahir Mahmood and Mohinder Singh, submitted their two-volume report to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Monday.
The Commission was constituted in March 2005 with a mandate to suggest criteria for identifying socially and educationally backward classes among the minorities and recommend possible welfare measures, including reservation in educational institutions and Government employment.
The Commission's recommendations are bound to trigger controversy and pit the minorities against the OBCs and Dalits, who are enjoying the benefits of quota.
The basic premises of the Commission's report is to ensure 15 per cent representation - proportionate to the minority population - to the minorities in Government jobs and educational institutions.
"Since the minorities - specially the Muslims - are very much under-represented and sometimes completely unrepresented in Government employment, we recommend that they should be regarded as backward in this respect within the meaning of that term as used in Article 16(4) of the Constitution - notably without qualifying the word 'backward' with the words socially and educationally - and that 15 per cent of posts in all cadre and grades under Central and State Government should be earmarked for them."
"The breakup within the recommended 15 per cent earmarked seats in institutions shall be 10 per cent for Muslims and the remaining 5 per cent for the other minorities," the report says.
However, if the Muslims cannot avail 10 per cent quota, the rest should go the non-Muslim minorities and "in no case shall any seat within the recommended 15 per cent go to the majority community", the report said.
While the Commission maintained that its recommendation for earmarking 15 per cent seats for minorities was in conformity with Article 16(4) of the Constitution, it has also suggested an alternative route to implement its recommendation.
It has said that in the 27 per cent OBC quota, an 8.4 per cent sub-quota could be earmarked for the minorities with an internal breakup of 6 per cent for Muslims and 2.4 per cent for other minorities.
The basis of the breakup is the presence of 8.4 per cent from the minority communities in OBC category among whom the Muslims are 73 per cent in total minority population.
To meet its objective of ensuring 15 per cent share for the minorities, in Government jobs and educational institutions, the Commission has decided to cast its net further wide and provide Dalit Muslims and Dalit Christians the benefit of reservation under Scheduled Caste category.
"We recommend that Para 3 of the Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order 1950 - which originally restricted the Scheduled Caste net to the Hindus and... to Sikhs and Buddhists, thus excluding from its purview the Muslims, Christians, Jains and Parsis - should be wholly deleted by appropriate action so as to completely de-link the SC status from religion and make the Scheduled Castes net fully religion-neutral," the report said.
Arguing for treating all such categories in one social frame, the reports said, "we further recommend that all those groups and classes among Muslims and Christians etc, whose counterparts among Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhists are included in the Central or State Scheduled Caste lists should also be covered by the Scheduled Caste net."
The Commission says that if any such castes among Muslims and Christians are now included in an OBC list, it should be deleted from there and should be transferred to the SC category.
Incidentally, in many States some Hindu, Sikh of Buddhist castes are in SC category, but the same castes in Muslims and Christians are in the OBC list.
In a bid to remove the "religion-based discrimination", the Commission has recommended maintaining the same caste category even if a person converts from one religion to another.
The Commission has concluded that the cause of socio-economic backwardness among the minorities is due to their educational backwardness, and suggested reservation for seats for them in educational institutions.
"We strongly recommend that at least 15 per cent seats in all non-minority educational institutions should be earmarked by law for minorities," the report says.
Under the economic incentives, the Commission has recommended earmarking 15 per cent of Central developmental funds for the minorities on the lines of Prime Minister's 15-point programme with a breakup of 10 per cent for Muslims and 5 per cent for other minorities.
Though the Commission's term expired on May 15, the report could not be submitted on time because of the Prime Minister's pre-occupation.
Sources told The Pioneer that the recommendations were made by the majority barring its member secretary Asha Das, a retired IAS officer with a note of dissent.
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