By TCN News,
New Delhi: An Eid-Milan program organized in Delhi on Sunday August 3rd felicitated 12 who were selected for the Civil Services. All of them are Zakat Foundation of India Fellows and qualified in the UPSC result declared in May 2014. They will now join their foundation course in the civil services academies in Mussoorie, Nagpur, Hyderabad, etc.
The program was jointly organized in New Delhi by Interfaith Coalition for Peace and Zakat Foundation of India. Justice Rajender Sachar was the chief guest. The program was attended by a large cross-section of all faiths including the present & former secretaries, senior police officers of the Govt of India & armed forces, vice chancellors of universities, diplomats, well known doctors, engineers, businessmen, advocates, numerous representatives of English, Urdu, Hindi and vernacular print & electronic media, CEOs of Banks, Professors and members of Interfaith Coalition for Peace (ICP) & ZFI.
Sitting L-R: Dr Deepali Bhanot, Rev Fr Packiam Samuel, Dr Nafis Siddiqi, Mr Shahid Mahdi, Mr Nirmal Singh, Dr Syed Zafar Mahmood, Justice Rajender Sachar, Mr Ishrat Aziz, Mr Siraj Qureshi.
The President of both the organizations Dr Syed Zafar Mahmood, quoted the Sachar Committee report and said that “in a pluralistic society a reasonable representation of various communities in government sector employment is necessary to enhance participatory governance. However, in no state does the representation of Muslims in the government departments match their population share. Muslims comprise less than 3% of officers in the civil service and their low presence in the judiciary has been a major point of concern. In the lower levels of the govt service all minorities taken together comprise only 2%”. Dr Zafar added that minorities candidates need to appear in higher numbers in the competitive examinations.
Dr Zafar Mahmood also made a PowerPoint presentation through which he explained that in the Lok Sabha, @13.4% (i.e. national Muslim population), there should be 73 Muslims. But during the period of 62 years from 1952 to 2014, the average number of Muslims in Lok Sabha has been less than 27. The situation in state assemblies is worse. As per Sachar Committee, the main reason of this paradox is that most of the Muslim predominant constituencies have been reserved for Scheduled Castes while the constituencies with much lesser Muslim percentage with very high SC presence have not been reserved. He gave the examples of Nagina (UP) and Karimganj (Assam) parliamentary constituencies where, as per Census, Muslims comprise more than 50% with negligible SC visibility; these have been reserved for SCs. He also reeled out a list of assembly constituencies like Bagaha (Bihar), Khargram (West Bengal), Bahraich (UP) etc. That’s why Sachar Committee recommended that the Delimitation Commission should be told to remove these anomalies. But the Govt of India during the last seven years has not even talked about this important Sachar recommendation.
Dr Zafar Mahmood revealed that he has written a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi reminding him of his commitment made in his first speech in the parliament promising that special purpose measures will be taken by his Govt for Muslim uplift. Copies of this letter were distributed in the program. After Dr Zafar went back to his seat Justice Sachar gave him a pat of shabashi.
This year 13 ZFI Fellows have been finally selected for the civil services out of which 12 were present in the program and Justice Sachar gave to them ZFI Certificates of Successful Inscription. Their list is as follows:
1. Mr Johny Tom Varghese (Kerala)
2. Mr Unice Ismail (Kerala)
3. Dr Anees C (Kerala)
4. Mr. Shiraz Daveshyar (Delhi)
5. Mr. Raja Yakoob Farooq (J&K)
6. Ms Sana Akhtar (U.P.)
7. Mr. Afaq Ahmad Giri (J&K)
8. Mr. Ehtesham Waquarib (Jharkhand)
9. Mr. Md Iqbal (Bihar).
10. Ms. Afsana Perween (Jharkhand)
11. Modassar Shafi (Bihar).
12. Mr. Md Moin Afaque (U.P.)
13. Mr. Raunaq Jamil Ansari (Jharkhand)