The move to set aside 4.5% share for minorities, including Muslims, within an existing affirmative-action system for other backward classes (OBCs) is legally sound, Rajya Sabha deputy chairperson K Rahman Khan has said. Rahman Khan, whose “reservation” model for Muslims in Karnataka served as a model reference point for the government’s decision, however said declaring the entire community backward based on Sachar's findings alone, as demanded by many Muslims, was not...
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PM focus on governance, not elections by Sankarshan Thakur
The discordant black-flag picket at the Golden Temple on New Year morning belied Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s clean-slate aspiration for 2012 but he is engaging in earnest with the challenges of what, in his own reckoning, will be another tough year. The Lokpal tangle controversially unresolved, attention is likely to remain riveted on politics, especially with high-stakes battles for Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and three other states under way. The Prime Minister,...
More »Battle lines being drawn over minority sub-quota
-The Hindu The government's decision on a sub-quota of 4.5 per cent for minorities within the overall 27 per cent reservation for the backward classes promises to be the new trigger for a heated political discourse just ahead of several Assembly elections, including the all-important poll in Uttar Pradesh just a few months away. More than a decade ago, the V.P. Singh government ushered in the ‘Mandal revolution' in North India. It...
More »Muslim groups see ‘minorities' quota as a googly by Vidya Subrahmaniam
The quantum is well below expectations of Muslims who have been pressing for exclusive reservation of 10% The Union government's much-anticipated quota-within-quota sop for minorities as a whole has left Muslim groups confused and groping for answers. On Thursday, the Union Cabinet marked off 4.5 percentage points from within the 27 per cent OBC Central quota, allocating the share to religious minorities, among them Muslims, Sikhs, Christians and Jains. (In the 2001...
More »UP polls ahead, govt clears 4.5% minority quota within OBC 27%
-Express News Service The government today decided to create a 4.5 per cent sub-quota for backward minorities within the 27 per cent quota for Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in jobs and admission to educational institutions. The political significance of the move lies in its timing just ahead of elections in Uttar Pradesh. The sub-quota was one of the Congress’s 2009 poll promises, but it appears in the current context to be targeted...
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