Muslim leaders slam Mayawati's 'quota politics'

NEW DELHI: A day after Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati wrote to the prime minister demanding reservation for Muslims based on their population percentage, Muslim leaders slammed it as "pre poll politics" and said if the CM was serious about the issue, she would have followed the established democratic procedure of first getting a resolution passed in the Uttar Pradesh assembly.
They also questioned the BSP chief's intent given that UP has not made any progress on implementation of the Ranganath Mishra Commission recommendation that there should be 15% reservation for Muslims in the OBC quota.
Kamal Farooqui, member of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board, said, "Had she been really serious about it she would have passed the resolution first. The Centre too will obviously see through it and they are unlikely to take it seriously. Muslims supported her last time and got nothing in return. I do not have the figures in front of me but vast funds have remained unspent in Muslim majority districts of Uttar Pradesh and the state government has not tried to change that." Farooqui was recently appointed national secretary of the Samajwadi Party though he said he was unlikely to fight elections in UP.
Jamiat general secretary Mahmood Madani, who is reported to have of late "veered" towards the BSP, welcomed the move, but conceded that it did reek of an attempt to garner political gains. "Even then, it is good that the issue has been raised. But it would have been much better if she had first got a resolution passed. She can still do it given BSP's majority in the assembly but there are other pending issues that she can easily solve. There are demands for designating Muslims as most backward that she can address but she has not. Law and order is a state subject yet she has not made any effort to pass a legislation against communal violence in the state," Madani said.
Arshad Madani, who heads the other faction of the Jamiat, said he had written many times to the central government on the issue of Muslim reservation but Mayawati's letter was nothing more than "votebank politics". "She is the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh with the mandate to implement Muslim reservation but she has not moved a finger. I agree with her in so much as Muslims who have been systematically booted out of employment, education and political centrestage are in need of special privileges but invoking it for votes ahead of UP polls is not the way forward," he said.
Jamaat-e-Islami Hind central advisory council member Mujtaba Farooq, who recently launched the Welfare Party which is believed to be the Jamaat's political extension, said Mayawati's move was a "last ditch" effort to woo Muslims. "In the recently concluded assembly elections, Muslims showed a tendency to vote for their own people rather than mainstream political parties, be it the AIUDF in Assam or the Muslim League in Kerala. That is the trend Mayawati is scared of, forcing her to resort to a semblance of quota politics. If she really wanted to practise it, she had five years to implement the recommendations of the Ranganath Misra Commission which she did not," Farooq said.