E-Paper
No proposal yet for granting quota for Muslims: Uddhav Thackeray
Earlier, the three ruling parties have failed to reach a consensus on the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), National Register of Citizens (NRC) and National Population Register (NPR).
Maharashtra chief minister, Uddhav Thackeray, on Tuesday said a decision on providing reservation in education to Muslims will be taken on the basis of legal validity and that there was no such proposal before him.
Thackeray’s statement adds to the growing list of contentious issues that the Shiv Sena, the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and the Congress — the coalition partners in the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government — have been at odds with.
Earlier, the three ruling parties have failed to reach a consensus on the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), National Register of Citizens (NRC) and National Population Register (NPR).
Thackeray’s statement came a few days after minority affairs minister Nawab Malik, who belongs to the NCP, declared that the state government would provide 5% quota to Muslims in educational institutions. Sena minister Eknath Shinde, too, had indicated that the party was in favour of the decision. However, following criticism by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and several other Hindu outfits, Thackeray on Tuesday backtracked.
“There’s no proposal before the government on providing reservation to Muslims. We will have to check its legal validity. The decision of providing reservation to Maratha community is still in court and we are working to get it approved,” he said.
He also lashed out at the critics, urging them to conserve their energy when the government takes any such decision.
In June 2014, the Congress-NCP government had announced 16% and 5% reservation for Marathas and Muslims, respectively, in education and government jobs. Later, the Bombay high court stayed the government decision, but said that Muslims could be given reservation in education. The BJP government. led by Devendra Fadnavis, which came to power the same year, chose not to continue with the reservation after the ordinance lapsed in December 2014, citing it was not in favour of quota on the basis of religion.
The MVA is already facing unease over implementing the CAA, the NRC and the NPR. Thackeray, however, has extended his support to the CAA, assuring that the law doesn’t threaten to strip anyone’s citizenship.
In a bid to resolve the issue of implementing the NPR and the NRC, the chief minister has declared setting up a committee comprising senior leaders from all three parties to discuss their concerns.
“My stand is clear. We have decided to form a committee of senior leaders from all the parties to discuss the issues related to the NRC and the NPR.” he said.
He also added that he won’t “allow anyone to strip citizenship of any citizens of my state”.
The announcement comes over a week after Thackeray in Delhi chose not to oppose the NPR, but had said he would prefer scrutiny. “The NPR is proposed along with census 2020. It happened in 2010 as well. Census happens after every 10 years in our country. If there are new columns proposed in the NPR, they will be scrutinised by our government and if there is a problem, we won’t take it ahead,” Thackeray had said.
The issue may not be resolved soon as it was already discussed in a coordination committee meeting held last week. The issues over the CAA and the NPR were also discussed in the meeting, but no consensus was reached.
