By Mirza Mosaraf Hossain, TwoCircles.net
The All Bengal Minority Youth Federation has sought Chief Minister Mamta Banerjee’s intervention over alleged discrimination against Muslims in the Other Backward Class category.
ABMYF in a memorandum addressed to CM on Tuesday claimed that Muslims are being denied benefits under OBC-A category. Earlier, the organisation had submitted a similar memorandum to the Chairman of West Bengal Minority Commission.
The memorandum reads that Muslims are entitled to reservation for being in OBC-A list but various government organisations are not adhering to it while recruitment. Even educational institutes are not following reservation guidelines and thus Muslims are deprived of benefits.
Highlighting a case of alleged OBC-A reservation discrimination, the memorandum says that though candidates of all categories including SC/ST and OBC-B, were called for interview for the post of Director in West Bengal’s Food Processing Industry and Horticulture department, not a single candidate from OBC-A category was called for the said interview.
The same discrimination is also visible for the recruitment of computer analyst in Kolkata Police. Here 5 seats were reserved for Muslim candidates under OBC–A category. but only three were selected for the said even after having 5 eligible candidates.
In July, Twocircles.Net had raised the issue of discrimination against Muslim students and candidates by various recruiting agencies and education institutions. Then it came to light that out of 120 total seats, 11 were reserved for OBC-A, for recruitment in the department of West Bengal Audit and Account Service Recruitment Examination-2016 under Public Service Commission but no Muslim candidate under OBC-A category was selected. This despite 41 candidates being called for interview under this category.
Commenting on the situation, general secretary of ABMYF, Mohammad Kamruzzaman claimed, “ Though the policy of reservation for the Muslims under OBC-A category was started for the overall improvement of Muslims, some recruiting agencies and institutions are not implementing the reservation roster. May be they are under influence of some administrative authorities. We want our Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee to intervene in this cause so that Muslim candidates can get benefits of this reservation policy.”
ABMYF also has planned to organise an intellectual meeting of various Muslim eminent personalities after August 15 to discuss cases of deprivation and discrimination against Muslims under present reservation policy.