In its final cabinet meeting before the Assembly election in May, the Bharatiya Janata Party government in Karnataka last week decided to remove Muslims from the Other Backward Classes quota.
The BJP has argued that the OBC quota for Muslims, which entitled them to reservation in government jobs and admissions in educational institutions, was unconstitutional because reservation based on religion is not allowed. But this justification is legally dubious, experts said, because Muslims had been granted reservation owing to their social backwardness and not their religion.
In several states, Muslim sub-castes that are “socially and educationally backward”, as defined by the Mandal Commission, are included in OBC lists. Their inclusion typically happens on the recommendation of the respective state backward classes commission.
Before the recent changes, all Muslim sub-castes in Karnataka were considered backward and a sub-category called 2B was carved out for them from the…