PM steps up attack on Congress over religion-based quota

Tribune News Service

Aditi Tandon

New Delhi, May 1

Commencing his campaign in home state Gujarat, which votes in a single phase on May 7, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday raised the anti-Opposition pitch, daring the Congress to give a written undertaking that they won’t ever grant religion-based reservation.

“I dare the INDI alliance. Let them try and give a written guarantee to the country that they will not give reservation based on religion. Let them try and announce to the nation that they will never touch the quota meant for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and OBCs. I know they will never be able to give this in writing,” prime minister said at rallies in Sabarkantha and Banaskantha.

The PM attacked the Congress for using “fake videos to spread a false narrative that the BJP will change the Constitution and scrap reservation”. “As long as Modi is alive, no one can take away the SC, ST, OBC reservation,” the PM said, attacking Congress advocacy of wealth redistribution and inheritance tax as “Maoist declarations”.

The PM also struck an emotional chord in the state asking people to remember the issues on which the Congress campaigned in 2014, when he first became the PM.

“Even today, the Congress neither has issues nor the passion to work for the people. Do you remember, what were the issues of Congress in 2014? What will a chaiwala do? But the country responded to them... Those who once occupied 400 seats were reduced to 40,” PM Modi said. He had already prepared a list of works to be done in the first 100 days of his third term, he said.

The BJP has been questioning the Congress for pushing Muslim quota while in government in undivided Andhra Pradesh; approving a 4.5 per cent Muslim quota within the 27 per cent OBC quota during the UPA-II regime in 2011 and recently providing 4 per cent reservation to Muslims in Karnataka.

The BJP says the Constitution bars religion-based quotas. The Congress has, however, defended its move saying the reservations granted to the minority by its governments were well within the constitutional mandate and were based on the criteria of backwardness and not religion.

The Congress manifesto for 2024 elections promises to amend the Constitution to raise the existing 50 per cent reservation cap (mandated by the apex court in the 1992 Indra Sawhney judgment) for SCs, STs and OBCs under which it can accommodate backwards, including minorities.

The Congress cites the example of Tamil Nadu’s reservation cap of 69 per cent (Backward Classes 26.5 per cent, Most Backward Classes/Denotified Communities 20 per cent, backward class Muslims 3.5 per cent, Scheduled Castes 18 per cent and Scheduled Tribes 1 per cent).

Faced with legal hurdles, then Tamil Nadu Government headed by CM J Jayalalitha passed a law in the Assembly to protect the 69 per cent cap and prevailed on then PM PV Narasimha Rao to include the same in the ninth schedule of the Constitution, which ensured it cannot be challenged in courts. The TN quota cap stands even today.

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