Author: Our Legal Correspondent
Publication: The Telegraph
Date: September 27, 2010
URL: http://www.telegraphindia.com/1100928/jsp/nation/story_12990990.jsp
A Calcutta-based lawyer today moved the Supreme
Court against a notification the Bengal government issued last week formalising
a 10 per cent job quota the Left Front regime had announced for socially and
educationally backward Muslims.
"Why only Muslims?" lawyer-activist
Joydeep Mukherjee said in his petition. "The notification is a gimmick,"
he added, accusing the state of playing "vote-bank" politics ahead
of Assembly elections just a few months away.
The Bengal government had issued the notification
on September 24, some seven months after chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee
announced a "policy decision" to reserve 10 per cent government
jobs for disadvantaged sections of backward-class Muslims in the state.
The state already has 7 per cent reservation
for Other Backward Classes, which will now rise to 17 per cent. For SCs, the
reservation is 22 per cent and for STs 6 per cent.
Mukherjee, general secretary of the Calcutta-based
All India Legal Aid Forum, cited a recent Andhra High Court judgment that
struck down "Muslim" quotas as unconstitutional. That is pending
in the Supreme Court, he said, asking the court to set aside the Bengal notification.
