Telangana Chief Minister seeks power for States to decide on reservations
K Chandrashekhar Rao or KCR as he is known, Chief Minister of the newest State of the Indian Union Telangana, does not usually make it to the national media for his utterances. He has, however, set the proverbial cat among the pigeons by his announced intention to launch a nationwide agitation for devolution of power to State governments to decide on reservations for Muslims, Tribals and Other Backward Classes (OBCs) for which he is soliciting the support of fellow Chief Ministers from States such as Rajasthan, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Karnataka and Orissa apart from political parties including the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), Janata Dal (Secular) and Janata Dal (United). He needs to be stopped in his tracks. One can understand where KCR is coming from, of course. As a regional player whose party led the agitation for a separate State his primary political ambition is obviously to cement a social coalition that will keep him and his family in power for a long, long time. To that end, he is using quotas for the disbursement of state goods in terms of government jobs, educational opportunities et.al. to certain groups who he expects will support him in return, a tactic unfortunately previously deployed too and by better men than him including political leaders who ought to have known better. But then the prospect of power is a perennial aphrodisiac and is known to cloud better judgment. So, the KCR plan is to increase reservations in the State to 62 per cent — way beyond the Supreme Court imposed cap of 50 per cent — and to seek its inclusion in the Ninth Schedule of the Constitution to see off any legal challenge to the move. He wants to raise the quota for Muslims from four per cent to 12 per cent and for Scheduled Tribes from six per cent to 10 per cent in addition to the extant 15 per cent reservations for Scheduled Castes and 25 per cent quota for OBCs. Politically, KCR knows that Rajasthan and Haryana are grappling with the Jat and Gujjar quota issues, Gujarat with the demand for reservations from the Patidar community and Mamata Banerjee would jump at an opportunity to solidify her Muslim vote-bank. Ergo, his outreach to other States and regional parties to join hands with him and act as a pressure group.
India, however, is a more than just a federation of States; verily, it is more than merely the sum of its parts. The onus is on responsible, national parties such as the BJP and Congress to put India, rather than electoral calculations, first, and nip this mischief in the bud to prevent the opening of Pandora's Box.