Govt pushing opportunity commission
Formation of the EOC was one of the recommendations of the Sachar Commission which studied the social, economic and educational status of Muslims in the country.
A senior minister dealing with the subject told Deccan Herald on Monday that the government was speeding up the process to set up the commission.
A Group of Ministers (GoM), which is now studying the proposal, has been assigned the task so that a Bill in this regard can be introduced in Parliament next month itself.
The EOC and the implementation of the Sachar report has gained further importance after the government faced heat from the anti-Women’s Reservation Bill lobby which demanded a quota within the Bill for other backward classes and Muslims.
In addition to this, the Supreme Court interim judgment okaying the Andhra Pradesh government’s decision to accord job reservation for Muslims has put more pressure on the Congress-ruled Centre.
The government-appointed committee headed by N R Madhava Menon had recommended that the EOC should be set up on the lines of the National Human Rights Commission, but with a distinctive feature of basing its cases only on “hard evidence.” The commission would go into cases relating to all sectors like education, employment and policy making. Almost all countries, which have a pluralistic society, have commissions to look into social discrimination.
However, the government was dragging its feet on the issue so far though the Sachar Commission gave its report way back in 2006 and the President underlined the government’s commitment to set up the EOC, in her address to joint session of Parliament in June 2009, soon after UPA rode back to power for a second time.
Sachar, interestingly, made no recommendation of reservations for Muslims but suggested that those among the minority communities who match the social and occupational status of the scheduled and backward classes among Hindus be classified as Most Backward Castes. It also suggested they be given the same benefits that relevant articles of the Constitution make available to their counterparts among Hindus.
Informed sources said the government was aware that the other related bodies such as the National Commission for Scheduled Castes, National Commission for Scheduled Tribes and National Commission for Minorities were resisting setting up the EOC on the ground that it would lead to overlapping of tasks and would take away their mandate for affirmative actions in the respective areas.
The Minority Affairs Ministry, it is understood, has informed the GoM that the EOC, rather than taking away from their work, will complement the work done by other commissions.