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Reservation for Muslim OBCs in West Bengal a sham?

By Md. Ali, TwoCircles.net,

New Delhi: Referring to the hype over reservation to Muslim Other Backward Castes (OBC) in West Bengal, the chief economist of National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) Abusaleh Shariff said: “This is the biggest cheating one can do with normal ordinary Muslims because as opposed to the hype of 10% reservation, it’s just 0.7% reservation which the government has provided to OBC Muslims.”

While making a presentation on the socio-economic condition of Muslims in West Bengal Mr. Shariff also said the problem here is that only 2.4 % of Muslims in West Bengal have been identified as the Other Backward Classes by the Left government. So, practically just 2.4% of total Muslim population has been provided with the reservation of 0.7%. This kind of political gimmick can’t enable the community to rise above its backwardness, he further said.

During the course of his presentation at India Islamic Cultural Centre in New Delhi on 22nd March he categorically said that for Muslims, West Bengal is worse than Gujarat if one measures their socio-economic status which suffers from huge deprivation in most of the economic social, human development indicators — education, employment, health and infrastructural facilities.

Mr. Shariff who was also member-secretary to the Sachar Committee said that given the utter backwardness of the community it was only imperative that a biggest chunk of the community should have been identified as OBC but the Left govt. in the state has continuously denied this status to the backward Muslims of the state. Also because Muslims can’t become Schedule Caste that backward Muslims should be categorized as OBCs, he argued.

Mr. Shariff emphasized the need for a separate reservation of 20% for all Muslims who should also be categorized as OBCs, in the government jobs because of two reasons. First at present the share of Muslims in the govt. jobs is just 2.1 % when they constitute more than 25% of the population of the state. Second, government job is one of the prominent ways through which Muslims can be brought in the national mainstream.

When asked about the reasons why in spite of this kind of discriminatory attitude of the Left government, more than 17% of Muslims voted Left in the last election, Mr. Shariff said that, “with the help of political rhetoric, media hype and the diplomatic covering the West Bengal government has managed to attract Muslim votes.”