Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Monday called the reservation bill for Muslims in Telangana as a trash paper and said the bill would be quashed at the central level as it has no legal sanctity.
The party also added that it would project the ruling TRS party in a bad light and the lotus party will utilise the issue to politically grow in the state.
“At the party level, we are going to utilise this as a great opportunity for the rise of BJP in Telangana. And at the (central) government level, this will be quashed right at the beginning,” party spokesperson Krishna Saagar Rao told media.
“Religion cannot be a basis for reservations, and legally its not viable as both High Court and Supreme Court has capped reservation at 50 per cent,” he added.
“They (the government) haven’t followed the process and so the Bill is just like a trash paper, it does not have any validity,” he further said.
BJP had demanded two separate bills for Muslims and STs and said they support the quota hike for STs but oppose the hike in reservations for Muslims as it amounts to communal politics.
Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting Venkaiah Naidu has been quoted as saying that the move will pave the way for a mini Pakistan in India.
The Backward Class, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Reservation Bill, 2017 passed by the Telangana legislative assembly would increase reservation quota for Muslims from 4 % to 12 % and that of Scheduled Tribes (ST) from 6 % to 10 %.
Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao had made it clear that the reservations were not based on religion or caste but being provided on the basis of socio-economic backwardness.
