Bharatiya Janata Party (BP) leader Avinash Gehlot on Saturday, May 25 announced that the Rajasthan state government will review the inclusion of 14 Muslim groups under the Other Backward Classes category (OBC) for reservations.
Gehlot, who is the Empowerment Minister of the state, also criticised the previous Congress government for granting these reservations between 1997 and 2013, alleging it was a result of “appeasement politics”, The Hindu reported.
Avinash Gehlot stated that the BJP government in Rajasthan is strongly firm on its decision to review the reservations. He went on to say that providing reservations in government jobs and education based on religion is prohibited under Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar’s constitution. The minister also said that a high-level committee will be constituted to examine the matter.
“The Congress granted reservations to the Muslim groups under the Other Backward Classes category (OBC) between 1997 and 2013 as a part of its ‘appeasement politics’. We have all those circulars, and the government is going to review it [the quota matrix],” The Hindu quoted the minister as saying.
Pertinently, Rajasthan state currently grants a total of 64% reservation, with 21% allocated for OBCs, 16% for Scheduled Castes (SC), 12% for Scheduled Tribes (ST), 10% for Economically Weaker Sections (EWS), and 5% for Most Backward Classes (MBC). Around 29 out of the 82 communities under the OBC category are Muslim communities, according to the state’s social justice department.
The announcement comes following the Calcutta High Court’s (HC) recent judgement, invalidating the classifications of 77 classes of Muslim community as OBCs in West Bengal. The HC declared the classification illegal, which could potentially deny other communities their rights, calling it an affront to democracy and the Indian Constitution.
“This court’s mind is not free from doubt that the said community has been treated as a commodity for political ends,” said a division bench of justices Tapabrata Chakraborty and Rajasekhar Mantha while passing the judgement.
Amid the ongoing Lok Sabha election, the issue of Muslim reservations has become a contentious topic for the BJP. Several BJP senior leaders including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah weighed in on the issue, accusing India’s largest opposition party Indian National Congress and their allies of granting OBC reservations to Muslims solely for electoral gains. Shah even went on to accuse the West Bengal government of issuing OBC certificates selectively to approximately 118 Muslim groups without following the proper procedure of conducting a thorough survey.
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