5% quota for Muslims in education, jobs

The Andhra Pradesh government has decided to reintroduce five per cent reservations for the Muslim population both in education and employment based on the recommendations of the BC Commission constituted by it.

Addressing media after the Cabinet meeting, Mohammed Ali Shabbir, minister for information and public relations, said the government will bring an ordinance soon so that Muslim students can get reservations from the current academic year itself.

The Cabinet has decided to follow the creamy layer principle here on the lines of Government of India's guidelines. According to the minister, a son or a daughter of a family whose annual income is Rs 2.5 lakh or above will not be eligible for the reservations.

It may be recalled that the state high court last year quashed the government orders introducing similar reservations citing absence of any commission's recommendations.

The government, however, has not accepted the third recommendation of the commission, which advised the government to shift the Muslim sub-castes such as Pinjara and Laddaf from the existing BC categories to the newly proposed reservation, which will now be as BC-e group.

Meanwhile, chief minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy has shifted senior Cabinet colleague M Satyanarayana Rao from the endowments portfolio to the sports and cultural affairs following the controversy over the regularisation of temple land. Earlier, the chief minister rejected Rao's resignation owing to moral responsibility for the alleged irregularities.

Today's Cabinet also decided to hold elections for municipalities in the state before the September 10, 2005.