March,27 : The Supreme Court’s interim order on Thursday allowing four per cent quota for backward classes among Muslims in Andhra Pradesh assumes significance, both political and social, for the principal minority community in post-Independent India. It has also come as a major political and electoral breather for the ruling Congress in Andhra Pradesh and the UPA at the Centre. With many political parties, including the Communists, now talking about the need for quota for Muslims, the Supreme Court’s order, though interim in nature, has boosted the chances of the minority community securing reservation in other states too. The Congress-led UPA, which had promised reservation for Muslims just before the general elections, may now speed up the pace towards the minority quota. The order is also a shot in the arm for the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government in West Bengal, which announced 10 per cent reservation for Muslims. The debate on whether Muslims as a community, or the backward classes among them, should get reservations in educational institutions and government jobs is as old as Indian Independence. Soon after Independence, Muslims were grouped along with the Scheduled Castes for the purpose of political reservations, only to be declared a "minority" community. The late chief minister Y.S. Rajasekhar Reddy revived the Muslim quota issue almost six decades later when the Congress government in Andhra Pradesh announced reservations for backward sections of the community. The talk of a Muslim quota also gained momentum with the Justice Rajinder Sachar Committee and Justice Ranganath Mishra Commission favouring reservations for Muslims. The Andhra Pradesh government hastily rushed through the legislation, throwing it open to legal wrangling. However, the Congress government has proved third-time lucky on the Muslim quota.

The AP government, in its eagerness to win over Muslims, did little homework to overcome legal hurdles. It had created an exclusive group in the list of 15 groups eligible for reservation by coining the term "any other Muslim group excluding..." The Supreme Court has removed the 15th group while allowing the other 14 listed groups for the purpose of quota. By creating the 15th group, the AP government had indirectly sought to provide reservations to almost all Muslims, while states like Kerala, Karnataka, Manipur and Tamil Nadu took enough care to exclude the forward classes in the principal minority community. The Kerala and Karnataka governments took extreme precautions before providing quotas to certain sections of Muslims. They gathered volumes of scientific data on these Muslim groups to stand legal scrutiny. They focused on the socio-economic status of Muslim groups in their states without political consideration. This explains their success. The Tamil Nadu government gave reservations to Tamil-speaking Muslims only. Now it has extended the scope to include other backward groups. Though the AP government’s exclusion list is almost similar to those of Kerala and Karnataka, it failed to gather enough data on the groups that have been provided with the benefit of reservations.

Nevertheless, Muslim reservations have benefited the poorer sections and, for the first time since Independence, a large number of Muslim candidates were recruited in government services and admitted to professional courses. In all 15,776 Muslim students benefited from the quota in the last five years in Andhra Pradesh. When it comes to employment, 83 Muslim candidates were selected for government service, including six for coveted Group-I posts, while 326 joined the police service. The state government now has to effectively argue before a Supreme Court Constitution Bench and clinch the issue of reservation for Muslims in its avowed policy of social justice. An successful argument by the AP government will, in the final analysis, decide the case in for nationwide reservations for Muslims as well.