Centre’s minorities sub-quota ploy badly backfires

The May 28 judgment by an Andhra Pradesh high court division bench quashing the sub-quota for minorities in central government posts and certain central educational institutions brings into sharp focus the gross abuse of the reservation system by our political buccaneers and the judiciary’s overall failure to ensure adherence to its rulings.

The UPA’s decision of December 22, 2011, to implement sub-quota from January 1, 2012, was to capture minority vote banks. The uproar about it; the Election Commission stopping the implementation of the sub-quota in the five poll-bound states; Union law minister Salman Khurshid’s controversial remarks against the Commission censuring him for promising sub-quota for minorities; and his apology to it all are part of the sordid saga of the UPA’s ignominious rule.

Khurshid tried to defend the indefensible by stating that the sub-quota was as recommended by the National Commission on Religious and Linguistic minorities. This commission was set up in 2004 to identify the socially and economically backward sections among religious and linguistic minorities and recommend measures for their welfare including reservation in government employment.  But its report of 2007 was devoid of any cogency, originality, and mention of the socially and economically backward groups among the minorities which it was required to identify.

It is in this context the rulings on writ petitions filed by R Krishnaiah of the AP Backward Classes Association and some others challenging the 4.5% sub-quota for minorities within the 27% quota for OBCs assume great significance. The rulings that are the Centre’s action is unconstitutional and unsustainable; the sub-quota carved out only on religious lines instead of any intelligible basis is violative of Articles 15(1) and 16(2) of the Constitution, which declare that no citizen shall be discriminated against on the basis of religion; the religious groups — Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists and Zoroastrians — for whom the reservation is provided are heterogeneous, rather than homogeneous, to be clubbed.

The bench emphasised that absolutely no empirical evidence was placed before it to enable it to conclude or support the requirement of carving out a special class of beneficiaries from the existing backward classes; absolutely no material was placed before it to demonstrate that persons belonging to the religious groups mentioned are more backward than any other category of backward classes or that they need any preferential treatment as compared to other OBCs; and in the absence of any factual basis by making a special provision for religious minorities with regard to admission in some central educational institutions and employment in appointments and posts under it, the central government has exceeded the constitutional boundaries.

The dilution and politicisation of the constitutional provisions for the uplift of the backward, their use by the affluent, and the craze for quotas even after 60 years of India’s development efforts would not have happened but for the chaotic proliferation of jurisprudential literature on reservation; had the judiciary not abdicated its responsibility as the most important pillar of Indian democracy; and made concerted efforts for making the national and state level backward classes commissions accountable and their functioning transparent through dedicated websites,  detailed annual reports, insistence on maintenance of all records relating to the OBCs (also the SCs-STs) and scrutiny of these records periodically, all of which would have given the reservation policy the much needed administrative impetus and developmental direction.

If reservation is not religion-based, what has the judiciary done in those states that have religion-based reservation is a moot issue. A case in point is Tamil Nadu. During the DMK regime M Karunanidhi wanted separate reservation of 3.5% each for Christians and Muslims. The chairman of the Tamil Nadu Backward Classes Commission was only too willing to act; for as he was on government’s sinecure, as Karunanidhi called the tune he played the piper.

In his brazenness, Khurshid has asserted that the Centre is firm on the sub-quota for minorities, and would immediately go to the Supreme Court with a Special Leave Petition against the high court’s decision. Readers have to wait and see what is special about the SLP and how the apex court views it.

Meanwhile, it may be good news to Khurshid that the judiciary is not against sub-classification of OBCs. As sub-classification exists in some states, say, as Most Backward Classes in Tamil Nadu, any politician in Khurshid’s place genuinely concerned about the advancement of the backward would work for carving out a sub-quota of MBCs within the OBCs  irrespective of caste and religion. But political opportunists are seldom change-makers.

The author is a sociologist and media commentator on public affairs. 

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