ANANTAPUR : The Anantapur District Forum for Social Justice on Friday sought intervention of United Progressive Alliance chairperson Sonia Gandhi to ensure reservation for Muslims in the State.

Talking to newspersons here, forum leaders -- S. Abdul Rasool, S. Seshaiah, A. Chandrasekhar, S. Khader -- and others stated that 5 per cent reservation introduced by the State Government for Mulsims as BC (E) was found unconstitutional by the High Court on the ground that the methodology followed by the BC Commission to study the socio-economic backwardness of the Muslim community in the State was wrong.

Social backwardness

However, the court had observed that there was no prohibition to declare Muslims as a socially and educationally backward community for the purpose of Article 15 (4) and 16 (4) of the Constitution, provided they satisfied the test of social backwardness, they mentioned. The technical mistakes committed by the State Government in the process of enacting reservation could be rectified without much difficulty, they stated.

As per the Supreme Court judgment on Mandal Commission, the total reservation could exceed 50 per cent in case of exigencies, they said.

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