Thursday, April 05, 2007

Muslims in Uttar Pradesh not a minority: High Court



The courts are suddenly starting to seem like a perpetual enemy to the Congress and a few of its like. They have been over-turning quite a few laws in the recent past, with some of the more prominent ones being the Ninth Schedule, the Foreigners law in Assam, the move by Andhra Pradesh to give reservations to the muslim community, and the recent staying of educational reservations for OBC's. But this one promises to be very controversial, and raise the hackles across a wide section of politicians. In fact, I am sure that this will
be covered in a number of Indian political blogs in the next few days.
What am I talking about ? Well, read a bit of this article:

In a landmark judgement, the Allahabad High Court on Thursday held that Muslims couldn’t be treated as a religious minority anymore in Uttar Pradesh.
Justice S N Srivastava gave the ruling after considering various criteria including the population of Muslims as enumerated in the census reports of 1951 and 2001.
The judgment, which is likely to cause polarization among political parties, comes two days ahead of the first phase of the crucial Assembly elections in UP starting on Saturday.

What makes the emerging situation even more interesting is that the UP polls are just around the corner, and political parties seeking the Muslim vote are most likely going to be trying to promise a quick reversal of this judgement and granting of minority rights to the Muslim community.
What will happen next ? There are bound to be a number of petitions filed in the Supreme Court, and the Congress Government is likely to get into the act. I am sure that there will be promises made to try and reverse this judgement through a new law (the first and foremost promise that a politician can make). And, opponents of the Samajwadi Chief, Mulayam Singh are going to try and pin the blame on him.
Another situation that I think will happen is that parties that try to mobilise the Hindu vote such as the BJP and the VHP will try and create a fear psychosis in the state to the effect that, Hindus in the state are on the edge of losing their majority, and unless the Hindu masses are mobilized and a party that does not promise appeasement is brough to power, there is not going to be any relief.

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posted by Ashish Agarwal @ 12:05 PM