Supreme Court upholds 4% quota for backward Muslims in Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh government received a shot in the arm on Thursday as the Supreme Court lifted a stay on its 4% quota in education and jobs for Muslims from backward castes.
The issue, however, would be finally decided by a constitution bench by August-end.

The quota ensured benefits to 14 socially and educationally backward Muslim groups identified by the AP State Backward Commission.

Calling the Andhra government’s petition an appeal that raises important constitutional questions, a bench of Chief Justice KG Balakrishnan and justices JM Panchal and BS Chauhan referred it to a constitution bench.

“Andhra government says certain sections of Muslims are socially and educationally backward. What is wrong in it? It is only a question as to how you identify them,” the judges remarked. “It is not a question as to whether they are Hindus or Muslims. The question is social and educational backwardness. Just because they are Muslims, it cannot be said that they don’t belong to socially and educationally backward classes,” the bench added.

Representing Andhra, attorney general Goolam E Vahanvati contended that the state high court did not apply its mind while passing the judgment staying the quota. The HC had failed to consider the fact that identification of the most backward groups among the Muslims was done by the State Backwards Commission, they said.

Counsel for reservationists K Parasaran argued that while barbers, dhobis and those working in cremation grounds in the Hindu community were extended reservation benefits under backward class category, similar groups in the Muslim community were deprived of the reservation policy. It’s discriminatory, he said.

However, the anti-reservation lobby that included counsel Muralidhar Rao and former solicitor general Harish Salve cautioned that extending “religion-centric” reservations posed a grave “danger of fissiparous tendencies developing in the country”.

A seven-judge constitution bench of the Andhra HC had, by a 5:2 majority, said the AP Reservation for Socially and Educationally Backward Classes of Muslims Act, 2007 was “unsustainable”.
It was against Article 14 (equality before law) and other provisions, the HC had said. The HC had also said that the State Backwards Commission relied on data collected from observations made by Anthropological Survey of India that was meant to make an anthropological profile of the Indian population and had no relevance to quota.