The Narendra Modi government is considering a proposal to dump a key recommendation of the Sachar committee to set up an equal opportunity commission to ensure diversity in private and public sector jobs, suggest the contents of a report tabled in Parliament last week.
The Sachar committee, appointed in 2005 by the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and whose report a year later had brought out startling facts about the abysmal social, economic and educational status of Muslims in the country, had recommended that although the National Commission for Minorities (NCM) had been functioning since 1992, an equal opportunity commission should be set up to address the grievances of deprived groups, including minorities.
However, the Modi government feels that such a commission would be redundant in light of the existence of the National Commission of Minorities.
The revelation came in the 79th report of the Committee of Government Assurances of the Lok Sabha, which reviewed the pending assurances of the Union minority affairs ministry and tabled the report in Parliament on Thursday.
The committee examined the pending assurances by the government to set up the equal opportunity commission. The assurances have been listed in replies to questions in the Lok Sabha on 17 occasions between 2009 and 2018.
Based on the report of an expert committee headed by legal luminary N.R. Madhava Menon, a bill was drafted by the second UPA government in 2013 to set up the equal opportunity panel as a statutory commission. The bill was approved by the Union cabinet in February 2014.
However, the proposal to set up the commission was sent for inter-ministerial consultations after the Modi government came to power.
Now, the assurance committee has been informed by the Union minority affairs ministry that divergent views were received from various ministries and departments on the equal opportunity commission.
“After detailed examinations in the ministry in its totality, the opinion of MoMA (ministry of minority affairs) is that the NCM can effectively take care of the functions as envisaged under EOC (equal opportunity commission). A proposal has therefore been sent to the Cabinet in this regard and the decision of the Cabinet is awaited,” said the report.
The minority af fairs ministry secretary told the assurance committee that the proposal for establishing the equal opportunity commission was not supported by the Union finance and home ministries.
The secretary reproduced the opinion of the Union home ministry: “Equal opportunities are required to be given to individuals and not groups as within the groups, there may be persons who are more advantaged or less advantaged, as most religious groups have poor, rich as well as very rich people.
“Therefore, instead of giving EOC to a group, it should be given to individuals. This was the opinion of MHA. The Ministry of Finance says that the NCM has already been constituted. Consent was not given to form a commission again because its mandate and the proposed mandate of the EOC were similar. Taking the views of both of them together, we again presented the Cabinet note on 18.02.2020. The proposal is still under consideration,” the assurance committee’s report said, quoting the secretary.
The assurance committee said the issue needed to be addressed in a time-bound manner. The committee recommended to the ministry “to take a holistic view... in the light of the relevant opinions and views from various ministries/departments and coordinate with all concerned stakeholders in a constructive manner so as to arrive at the final decision”.
Jawed Alam Khan, a researcher on public policy, said the equal opportunity commission, as recommended by the Sachar committee, was not meant for religious minorities alone.
“The proposed EOC intended to encourage public and private institutions to adopt a more affirmative and inclusive approach in recruitments so that people from different religious groups, social categories like SCs, STs and OBCs get opportunities without comprising merit,” Khan said.
He said the UPA government itself delayed the setting up of the commission.
The existing commissions for minorities, Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes are more focused on dealing with cases of atrocities, Khan said. These commissions can be empowered to work on affirmative and inclusive actions. However, no such effort has been made so far, he added.