Religion, Caste And Tribe Based Reservation - 4

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<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Meira Ministry to oppose reservation for minorities  </b>
Pioneer.com
Rajeev Ranjan Roy | New Delhi
'Quota within quota will harm SC interests'
The Centre's move to get quota within quota for <b>Dalit Christians and OBC Muslims </b>may face fierce opposition from within the Government. The discordant voices have begun doing rounds in the corridors of the key Ministry dealing with the Scheduled Castes and Other Backward Classes.

The Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment headed by Meira Kumar is opposed to any attempt to tamper with the 15 per cent quota for SCs in Government jobs and academic institutions to accommodate Dalits among Muslims. "The Ministry is of the view that the Government should separately earmark quota for such a group. The quota within quota would be detrimental to the interests of SCs," a Ministry source said. 

"There is, in fact, need to increase the SC quota to 16.23 per cent in proportion to their population. Since long, the Ministry has been advocating this. It is not being done as the Centre needs to amend the Constitution to remove the Supreme Court ceiling of 50 per cent on quota," he said.

The National Commission for Linguistic and Religious Minorities headed by Justice Ranganath Misra, has recommended 'quota within quota' for<b> OBC and Dalit Muslims.</b>

The proposal has been severely criticised by the different political parties, pleading that religion-based quota was against the spirit of the Constitution.

<b>Currently, OBCs, SCs and STs get 27, 15 and 7.5 per cent quota in the Government jobs respectively</b>. The OBCs consist of both the Hindu and non-Hindu castes, which were identified as socially, educationally and economically backward by the BP Mandal Commission. The SCs and STs have quota in the Government academic institutions as well.

<b>"Most of the OBC and SC ministers in the UPA Government are opposed to accommodate Muslims in the existing arrangements. The Government would have to work out some other mechanism to get quota for them separately by amending the Constitution to vacate the SC order on 50 per cent ceiling or removing the barrier of religion from being the Scheduled Castes,"</b> an official said.

The Ranganath Misra Commission has recommended that in the 27 per cent OBC quota, an 8.4 per cent sub-quota be earmarked for the minorities with an internal break-up of 6 per cent for Muslims and 2.4 per cent for other minorities. In the case of non-Dalits, they should be accorded the status of Scheduled Castes and Tribes <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

Dalit Christians are really suffering they should revert back to Hindusim. <!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo-->