The Supreme Court on Tuesday said that the Karnataka government’s decision to scrap the 4% quota for Muslims should not be implemented till May 9, after the state sought time to file its response to a plea challenging the move.
The order was challenged in the Supreme Court by a petitioner named L Ghulam Rasool, who said that the reservation benefits given to poor Muslims in the state have been taken away keeping electoral gains in mind, PTI reported.
At an earlier hearing, the top court had observed that the decision was “prima facie fallacious”.
Last month, the BJP government in Karnataka had removed Muslims from the Other Backward Classes reservation. The decision was taken at the government’s last Cabinet meeting before the Assembly polls on May 10. The Bommai government stated that the reservation was not constitutionally tenable and divided the 4% quota equally among the two dominant Hindu communities of the state – Vokkaligas and Veerashaiva-Lingayats.
