New Delhi, Dec 18 (IANS) After a delay of 20 months since it was presented, the government Friday tabled in the Lok Sabha a report on the status of minorities in India that has recommended 10 percent quota for Muslims - the largest minority in the country - in government jobs, educational institutions and social welfare schemes.
The report by the National Commission on Religious and Linguistic Minorities, headed by Justice Ranganath Mishra, former chief justice of India, has defined religious and linguistic minorities as backward classes and recommended 15 percent reservation for all minorities in jobs, education and welfare schemes. The panel was constituted in October 2004.

Stressing that education was the “most important requirement for improving the socio-economic status of backward sections among religious minorities”, the report says that literacy levels of Muslims and Buddhists were low and next to Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST).

“Educational levels of religious minorities vary considerably from one community to the other. While educational level of Jains, Christians and Parsis is higher, that of Muslims and Buddhists is low and is next to SC/ST,” according to the 449-page document in two volumes.

Of India’s 1.2 billion population, Muslims are the largest minority at 14 percent followed by Christians at 2.3 percent, Sikhs at 1.9 percent, Buddhists at 0.8 percent, Jains at 0.4 percent and others including Parsis at 0.6 percent.

Pointing out that the minority intake in minority educational institutions has been restricted to about 50 percent only, the commission “strongly” recommends that “at least 15 percent seats in all non-minority educational institutions should be earmarked by law for the minorities”.

“Within the recommended 15 percent earmarked seats in institutions shall be 10 percent for the Muslims and the remaining 5 percent for the other minorities,” it says.

The report falls short of recommending minority status to the Aligarh Muslim University and Jamia Millia Islamia University in New Delhi, but suggests such institutes should be “legally given a special responsibility to promote education at all levels to Muslim students by taking all possible steps for this purpose”.

The report says Idnian minorities - “especially the Muslims - are very much under-represented, and sometimes wholly unrepresented”, in government jobs.

“They should be regarded as ’socially and educationally’ backward in this respect within the meaning of that term as used in the constitution,” said the report.

It mentions that the commission was “guided by the constitutional provisions and the goals that the constitution has set for the country” in reviewing the status of socially and economically backward” communities.

Among other majors it recommends 15 percent of posts in all cadres and grades under the central and state governments should be earmarked for minorities and 10 percent of that should be reserved for Muslims, which form the largest — 73 percent — share of the minority population in India.

“The remaining five percent (should be reserved) for the other minorities,” it says.

“In no case shall any seat within the recommended 15 percent go to the majority community,” it emphasizes.

Recommending delinking of Scheduled Caste status from religion and abrogation of the 1950 Scheduled Caste Order which “excludes Muslims, Christians, Jains and Parsis from the SC net,” the report favours Scheduled Caste status for Dalits in all religions.

The delay in tabling the report had figured figured prominently in parliament since it was presented in May 2007.

It was, before being tabled in the Lok Sabha by Minority Affairs Minster Salman Khurshid, leaked to the media.

Many parties, including the Samajwadi Party, the Rashtriya Janata Dal, were demanding that the report be tabled and its recommendations implemented. The main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been accusing the government of appeasing minorities for “vote bank politics”.