Andhra law struck down

Hyderabad, Feb. 8: Andhra Pradesh High Court today struck down a state legislation providing 4 per cent reservation in educational institutions and government jobs to 15 backward groups belonging to the Muslim community.

The seven-judge bench headed by Chief Justice A.R. Dave said the quota for Muslims, which had been announced on the basis of recommendations of a commission looking into the backwardness of the community, was “unsustainable” and could not be implemented.

The division bench, in a 5-2 verdict, held that the P.S. Krishnan Commission had conducted its survey only in six of Andhra’s 23 districts.

The court upheld the petitioners’ argument that the government had identified backward classes among Muslims without gathering enough data.

Soon after the order, chief minister K. Rosaiah directed advocate-general D.V. Sitarama Murthy to file a special leave petition in the Supreme Court challenging the verdict.

At present, Andhra provides for 51 per cent reservation, which is above the 49 per cent limit set by the Supreme Court.

A batch of petitions challenging the excess quota in several states is pending before the apex court.

The Congress government, then headed by Y.S. Rajasekhar Reddy, had passed the legislation on July 23, 2007, giving the 4 per cent reservation in education and government jobs to the 15 backward groups among Muslims.

The community makes up 17.9 per cent of the state’s population according to the 2001 census. Several petitions were filed in the high court challenging the constitutional and legal validity of the legislation, called Andhra Pradesh Reservation in Favour of Socially and Educational Backward Classes of Muslims Act, 2007.

The court, however, clarified that today’s order would not have any impact on admissions made in educational institutions since 2007, removing the cloud of uncertainty surrounding the fate of some 3,000 Muslim students who got seats in medical and enginee- ring colleges through the quota.

Under the Constitution, educational reservation is allowed under Article 15 and jobs under Article 16.

Both are now available to Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Socially and Educationally Backward Classes (SEBCs) — also called OBCs — depending on their percentage in the population.

Attempts by states to include Muslims, Christians and others in their SEBC lists have been objected to because Article 15 prohibits discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth.

Quotas cannot be set only on the ground of religion, caste or economic status.

Reservations can be announced after a two-stage process. First, the state has to set up a commission to identify the socially and educationally backward among communities.

Second, it may lay down an upper-income limit to exclude those socially advanced (the so-called creamy layer) from its scope.

This is the third time in the past six years that the high court has quashed the quota for Muslims in Andhra.


G S Radhakrishna, The Telegraph