HYDERABAD: Opposing reservation on religious lines, the BJP has said that there is no social inequality or caste system among Muslims and thus providing reservation to them in education and employment sectors by bringing them under BC category is not right.
Participating in a debate in the Assembly on Sunday on the reservataion bill, BJP floor leader G Kishan Reddy said, “In the GHMC elections, 33 per cent reservation is provided to BCs and they got 50 wards. However, 30 wards were won by Muslims under BC quota.
The chief minister should think whether providing reservation to Muslims is doing injustice to BCs or not,” Kishan Reddy said and recalled that BR Ambedkar too had opposed reservation on religious lines and said it was unconstitutional.
When Kishan Reddy spoke for more than his allotted time, speaker Madhusudhana Chary cut off the mike. Then, the BJP members staged a protest holding placards which said “Down with vote-bank politics”. All the five members of the party were then promptly suspended from the House.
AIMIM member Syed Ahmed Pasha Quadri suggested that the government create a new category-BC(F)-and provide reservation to even Syeds, Pathans, Shaikhs and other categories of Muslims. Under BC(E) only 14 groups of Muslims were getting reservation, he said.
T Jeevan Reddy of the Congress said that for increasing the ST reservation, the state need not go to the Centre and it can do it on its own. TDP MLA R Krishnaiah suggested that while implementing the BC reservation, the government should notify the posts under A, B, C, D and E categories so that no caste would suffer any loss. CPM’s Sunnam Rajaiah opposed inclusion of Boya and Kagita Lambada among STs.