The Janata Dal (Secular) president and former Prime Minister, H.D. Deve Gowda, has welcomed the Supreme Court order permitting the Andhra Pradesh government to provide 4 per cent reservation in education and government jobs to backward members of the Muslim community.
In a statement released here on Friday, Mr. Gowda claimed that during his tenure as Chief Minister of Karnataka in 1995, he provided for the first time separate reservation for Muslims, providing 4 per cent quota in government jobs, under a separate category 2B, and this was being implemented by the successive governments so far and the decision had stood the test of time. The Karnataka formula could be adopted as a “model” for the entire country, he said.