Reddy: Determined

Hyderabad, July 22: Andhra Pradesh High Court today suspended the Congress government’s order handing Muslims in the state five per cent reservation in education and jobs.

A division bench headed by Chief Justice Devender Gupta and Justice C.V. Ramulu today kept the government’s July 12 order in abeyance and referred the case to a full bench. Gupta said the case needed to be examined in detail and would come up for hearing next Tuesday before a three-judge bench.

The court directed professional educational institutions not to fill up the five per cent quota reserved for Muslims till the case’s final hearing.

The verdict comes in the wake of petitions by aggrieved students who had applied for medical seats as a consequence of a notification by the NTR Health University. The notification had sought applications from Muslim students on the basis of the quota.

Andhra VHP vice-president Muralidhar Rao also filed a petition, saying a religious quota was an unhealthy academic practice.

The state advocate-general said the court stay was just a temporary respite. “We will bring a full-fledged legislation in the Assembly to overcome the lapses,” he said.

Commenting on the court order, chief minister Y.S. Rajasekhar Reddy said in Delhi his government would soon plug all loopholes so that Muslims could benefit from what he described as a well-intentioned move.

Earlier, the counsel for the petitioners said the government had not consulted the Andhra Pradesh backward class commission which was empowered to decide on the inclusion of any caste or community. “Instead, the government had quoted the report of the commissioner of minorities to justify its action,” he told the court.

The commissioner of minorities’ report said 65 per cent of Muslims in Andhra live below poverty level. “The literacy rate among Muslims is hardly 18 per cent and among their women, only four per cent,” the government order had said.

Muslims in the state capital and other towns feel the VHP is out to scuttle the new quota through its petition. “The fundamentalist organisation (VHP) is not happy that our boys benefit by better education,” said Akbaruddin Owaisi, the leader of the Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen in the Andhra Assembly.

Mohammed Abdul Razak, a senior high court advocate, said the VHP opposition is ill-founded. “They have raised only technical lacunae in the government order of July 12,” he said.

“But all these lapses have already been covered under the draft bill for the legislation providing a quota to Muslims. The draft will soon be tabled in the House,” Mohammed Fareeduddin, state minister for Wakf and minorities, said.

T. Devender Gowd, deputy Telugu Desam Party leader in the Assembly, said today’s order proved the Congress government’s move was “hasty”.

“The concept should have been debated in academic forums and a consensus reached among other religious minorities before it was given statutory shape,” he said.