Telangana to mirror Tamilnadu in giving 12 % quota to Muslims

Hyderabad : Despite several of its earlier decisions facing legal hurdles in the past two years, the state government appears to be preparing itself to take another tough decision to fulfil its poll promise of providing 12 per cent reservations to Muslims in employment and education sector in the state.

CM K Chandrasekhar Rao is learnt to have decided to follow the much controversial ‘Tamil Nadu model’ of reservation system, where a total of 69 per cent quota of seats are under reserved category, to provide reservations to Muslims and other weaker sections in the state. “The state government will take its cue from Tamil Nadu in providing 12 per cent reservations to Muslims in accordance with their population ratio. We will enact a new legislation akin to Tamil Nadu’s law to increase the total percentage of reservations in the state. We will also enhance the percentage of reservations to STs from the existing 6 per cent to 12 per cent as per their population,’’ KCR was quoted as saying by his office here on Friday.

According to CMO officials, panel headed by former IAS officer G Sudhir, constituted to study the socio-economic profile of Muslims in the state, submitted its report to the chief minister here on Friday. Similarly, another committee, headed by retired IAS officer S Chellappa, appointed to study the conditions of STs in the state, too submitted its report to KCR.

During his interaction with the members of the two panels, the chief minister expressed his wish to make a new Act to provide 12 per cent reservations to Muslims in the state.

TRS had promised 12 per cent reservations to both Muslims and STs during poll campaign. The chief minister said soon an exclusive session of Assembly would be held to pass an Act to provide 12 per cent reservation to Muslims.

Interestingly, if the Telangana government provides 12 per cent reservations to Muslims, the percentage of total reservations in the state will go up to 58 per cent, which will in turn have to stand for judicial scrutiny.

In fact, as per the Supreme Court’s earlier verdict, total reservations cannot exceed 50 per cent. Because of this, the efforts made by the then chief minister YS Rajasekhara Reddy in July 2004 in the united AP to provide five per cent reservations to Muslims faced legal hurdle. Later, the government decreased the Muslim reservations to four per cent to keep total reservations at 50 per cent.

Source : New Indian Express