Sachar says poor Muslims need quota

The panel suggests quota in education and jobs for backward Muslims, reports Chetan Chauhan. The brighter side...

Published on: Dec 4, 2006, 02:30:00 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The report of the Rajender Sachar Committee on the status of Muslims was tabled in the Lok Sabha on Thursday. To ameliorate the condition of “acute deprivation" of Muslims, the panel suggested reservation in employment and educational institutions for the backward among them.

The panel said that among the Muslim social groups, the Arzals, whose traditional occupation is similar to that of scheduled castes (SC), might be designated as Most Backward Community and provided reservation. The Ashraf and Ajlaf groups, meanwhile, should be treated on a par with Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and covered under the OBC quota.

To increase the political participation of the community, the panel said Muslims should be nominated to public bodies, including local bodies. The committee also sought a review of the delimitation of assembly and parliament seats, and suggested that those constituencies that have a high percentage of Muslims should not be reserved for SC.

Minority Affairs Minister AR Antulay, who tabled the report in the House, later said, “The report is the best thing to have happened to the community.” He said the government would implement the panel’s recommendations by February, which incidentally is the time when assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh are likely.

The committee held that the Muslims' poor share of government jobs -- a mere 4.9 per cent - was due to bias against them. It recommended the creation of an Equal Opportunity Commission to look into complaints of discrimination. The committee also said madrassas be linked with senior secondary boards and that madrassa degrees be recognised for jobs.

Email Chetan Chauhan: chetan@hindustantimes.com

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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