Social justice plank to stay: Arjun

Govt to legislate on education quota for SC/STs, BCs

Human Resources Development Minister Arjun Singh declared in the Lok Sabha today that the government will 'deliberate and legislate' ways in which reservations for SC/STs and backward castes could be enforced in private educational institutions despite a Supreme Court order scrapping state controls on these institutions.

This assurance was given to the House after nearly 16 speakers from all political parties called out for a need to legislate on the matter, following a calling attention motion on the issue.

The Supreme Court verdict states that the government will have no control over the fee structure or admission quotas imposed by private edicational institutions, which it had earlier.

This raised the political temperature especially in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh where there is a large proliferation of private educational institutions with the government asserting that certain seats be reserved for backward classes.

Arjun Singh in his statement however, tried to bring the plank of social justice back to the Congress after Mandal and the backward classes movement had pushed it as a non-Congress issue.

He attributed the "social justice character" of the Indian Constitution to Jawahar Lal Nehru, and said that the "founding fathers of the Indian Constitution had laid down salutory principles of social justice. Nehru took initiative and got backward classes into the ambit of reservation," he added.

Perhaps, mindful that Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa and the UPA's DMK partners had been trying to hijack a backward class issue, Arjun Singh reiterated that 'this government was committed to reservation and to the social and political structure which the Constitution recognises.'

Adding that the SC verdict does not come into effect till the next academic session, he said that the government would try to build a consensus on a Bill on the matter soon.

There would be an all party meeting on the matter before the conclusion of the current session of Parliament. Earlier in the day, the Left parties met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh demanding that either a legislation be introduced to negate the effects of the SC verdict or at least a regulatory body be set up by the government to look into the working of private educational institutions.

The Left alleged that some private educational institutions were almost like corner shops and that the sector required regulation by the government.

The Prime Minister assured the Left that necessary steps would be taken by the government on the matter.

Even the BJP appeared to support the government on the need for a new legislation. Sushil Kumar Modi of the BJP said that in Andhra Pradesh alone almost 4,39,000 students were admitted in various private engineering collges.

'This can only be magnified in the context of the country and the seriousness of the situation can be gauged,' he said during his speech in Parliament.