The Congress party’s addiction to minority appeasement and the tendency among the UPA ministers to fight over turf has led to the distortion of the Equal Opportunity Commission (EOC), once touted as the ‘ultimate equaliser that an unequal Indian Society can get’. Instead, the UPA has decided that the EOC will now only address minority rights.
Initially, the Social Justice Ministry had claimed that since the EOC deals with the larger issue of social justice and equality, it should be under its purview. The Home Ministry’s argument was that since the EOC would be an overlapping commission over the others, it is best to keep it under its wing. The Social Justice Ministry, Women and Child Development Ministry and the HRD Ministry also vied to be the EOC’s nodal ministry, since the commission would be the big brother of all commissions and would replace the Human Rights Commission, SC/ST Commission and Women’s Commission. “The EOC was like a Super Commission as it can deal with any issue involving the violation of equality rights. But no ministry was willing to budge,” said an official who was part of the team working on conceptualising the idea.
In 2010, the PM had set up an EGoM under A K Antony to come to a settlement. Salman Khurshid, who doesn’t believe in the tag of a ‘minority’ minister, opposed the EOC’s dilution at all the EGoM meetings. He wanted it to be a Super Commission by replacing all other commissions, as was the original intention when it was mooted in 2008. To end the bickering, the government saw a political opportunity and decided to limit the commission as a body that deals with minority issues, on the pretext that there will be no overlap between other ministries. Meanwhile, Rehman Khan, who replaced Khurshid as the Minorities Minister in the last Cabinet reshuffle in October 2012, seized the opportunity to sell it as a minority-friendly measure of his party. The commission now will be under the complete control of the Minority Ministry and would replace the National Minority Commission.
The EOC’s main purpose was to counter all forms of biases-age, gender, caste, ethnicity, linguistic identity and sexual orientation. In its original form, it would have been a powerful body holding the powers of a civil court, with jurisdiction over both public and private sectors, with the authority to announce equal opportunity practice codes.
“It is sad that EOC, which would have heralded a totally new approach to social equality and mobility, will now be limited to the issues of religious minorities. It was an offshoot of Sachar committee recommendations but its mandate was much bigger. Vote bank politics has killed a beautiful concept,” said an official who was part of the team that was set up to conceptualise the EOC.