The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh / Hyderabad News : Constitutional validity of Muslim quota challenged

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Tuesday, Sep 16, 2008
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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh - Hyderabad

Constitutional validity of Muslim quota challenged

Legal Correspondent

Hyderabad: When the minority institutions run by persons from Muslim community are providing large number of seats in various courses at all levels for Muslim students, the government cannot provide additional reservation for the sections of Muslims under the garb of Backward Classes.

This was the argument put up by K. Ramakrishna Reddy on Monday, appearing for petitioners who filed a batch of writ petitions challenging the Constitutional validity of the action of the State government in providing reservation in the fields of public employment and education for certain sections of Muslims before a seven-member Bench of the High Court.

‘No proper criterion’

The Bench comprising Chief Justice Anil Ramesh Dave, Justice T. Meena Kumari, Justice B. Prakasha Rao, Justice D.S.R. Varma, Justice A. Gopala Reddy, Justice V. Eswariah and Justice Goda Raghu Ram was hearing the arguments of the senior counsel for the fifth day. The senior counsel gave details of the colleges and the number of seats available and said that such actions disclosed that there was no proper criterion evolved. He drew the attention of the court to show that whole exercise taken up by the AP Commission for Backward Classes was reduced to that of relying upon a report prepared by P.S. Krishnan, advisor to the government, who relied upon extracts of reports of Anthropological Survey of India and some district gazettes.

He said that the statistics collected and quoted by the AP Commission for Backward Classes did not disclose the group-wise details and without such details, no conclusion regarding the backwardness of the identified groups could be drawn. The arguments will continue on Tuesday.

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