By Mohammed Siddique, TwoCircles.net,
Hyderabad : A division bench of Supreme Court has given green signal to the admission of Muslim students in Andhra Pradesh under 4% reservation quota in professional colleges. The Supreme Court has told the state government that it can proceed with the admissions under Backward Class E category of the eligible students who had already completed the counseling process.
The Supreme Court however made it clear that these admissions will be subject to the final verdict of a larger bench of the Andhra Pradesh High Court which is hearing a batch of petitions challenging the constitutional and legal validity of the Muslim Reservations Act.
The state government had approached the Supreme Court to vacate the stay orders of the High Court against the 4% reservations for the 15 backward groups of Muslim minority in Andhra Pradesh. The government, pointing out that the High Court’s verdict was likely to take some more time and the admissions for the academic year 2008-09 were coming to end. Supreme Court initially permitted the state government only to conduct the counseling for the students under BC E category but not to give the permission. But with today’s orders the final obstacle has also been removed.
The SC order has come as a great relief for the students who were facing an uncertain future and were not able to decide whether to take the admission under the reserved quota or not. But now the observers say as the case in the High Court is unlikely to be decided soon, there will be no problem for the students who get the admissions in to the professional colleges now.
Muslims other than Syeds, Moghuls and Pathans, were likely to get admission on 153 medical, 51 dental and 3400 engineering seats, 1040 MBA and MCA and 120 Pharmacy seats in different colleges.
The number of MBBS seats the Muslim students will get is quite significant because prior to the reservations their number used to be less than 50 in general category. Apart from the approximately 200 Muslims students who will now get admission in reserve and general category in medical colleges, another two hundred Muslim students will study MBBS in two Muslim minority colleges Deccan and Sahadan.
The interim order of Supreme Court has also come as a great relief to the state’s Congress government which was facing a highly embarrassing situation vis-à-vis the Muslim minority. The Congress had come to power in the state in 2004 with a promise to provide 5% reservations to the Muslim minority in education and jobs. First attempt in this direction failed when its executive order was quashed by the High Court in 2004. Second attempt through legislation by the state assembly was also struck down by the High Court on the ground that religion based reservations were unconstitutional.
Keeping in view the objections raised by the court, the YS Rajasekhara Reddy government made third attempt in 2007 when it enacted a new legislations providing only 4% reservations to 15 backward groups of Muslims. Excluding socially forward Syed, Moghul and Pathans. Even then the quota covered more than 85% of the community satisfying most members of the community. The reservation was reduced from 5 to 4% to meet the legal requirement that the total reservations should not cross 50%.
However soon after the first batch of Muslim students got admissions last year, the High Court again stayed its implementation on a batch of petition filed by the pro BJP students and lawyers. A three member bench of High Court heard the case for a few months and latter handed it over to a seven member bench headed by the Chief Justice AR Dave. The matter is now pending before the bench and next hearing is scheduled for August 18.
While the reservations in education were challenged in the court, the quota in government jobs remained unchallenged and is being implemented by the government. Recently government recruited 8 Muslim engineers in Power transmission corporation.