First Blow to frauds of Sachar! Kudos to Ohriji and Patriotic Forum!

PIL filed by Patriots’ Forum in Delhi High Court against implementation of Sachar Report ( including Justice Sachar’s blatant recourse to suppressio veri, suggestio falsi) was heard today by the Division Bench of  Hon’ble Chief Justice M.K. Sharma and Justice Ms. Reva Khetrapal.  Senior Advocate Sri  P.N. Lekhi appeared in behalf of Patriot’s Forum, while Central Govt was represented by the Addl. Solicitor General, Sri Gopal Subramaniam.
 
After hearing the evasive pleas of Addl. Solicitory General and arguments of the Counsel for the Petitioner, Sri Lekhi, the Hon’ble Chief Justice brushed aside the objections brought up  by Addl. Solicitor General and directed that Central Govt should file an Affidavit in response to  the points raised in the petition. The next hearing has been fixed on 20th February.
 
Addl Solicitor General’s efforts to foreclose further hearings of the PIL was thwarted by the Sr. Advocate Sri Lekhi who drew attention of the Hon’ble Court to serious flaws in Sachar Report and the disastrous long term consequences of implementing the Committee’s divisive communal agenda. 
 
The main points highlighted in the PIL were as follows which might be discussed during further hearings:
 
i) That constitution of Sachar Committee by the P.M. solely for a religious group, namely the Muslims, was an act violative of the Constitution which does not permit any discrimination on the basis of religion. It was thus a clear violation of the Right to Equality.
 
ii)That Sachar Committee did not formulate any rational criterion for assessing the relative socio-economic status of different communities and made highly discriminatory recommendations merely on the assumption that Muslims were generallly poor, etc. 
 
iii) That Sachar Committee deliberately concealed the fact that in four globally recognised Human Development Indicators, namely Infant Mortality, Child Mortality, Degree of Urbanisation and Life Expectancy at Birth the Muslims were better placed than the Hindus. Then how can Muslims be considered more dis-advantaged or backward.
 
iv)There were 2 main reasons for lower per capita income of Muslims. First, according to Census 2001 every Muslim woman is giving birth to at least one more child than her Hindu counterpart because of non-acceptance of smally family norm. Second, as revealed by Census 2001 the work participation of Muslim women was abysmally low, i.e., barely 50% of the work particdipation by Hindu and Christian women. The pathetically low work participation of Muslim women was caused by the diktats of  the clergy/ community leaders for staying indoors / burqa. These important facts have been deliberately concealed by Sachar Committee.
 
v) That the Constitution does not allow any special benefits/ concessions to a minority group beyond what has been expressly granted under Articles 29 and 30, i.e., the cultural and educational rights for establishing their own institutions.
 
vi) That a domineering religious group, having nearly 15% of  the country’s total population, cannot be deemed to be a minority community. According to international norms only a non-dominant ethnic or religious group can claim to be a ‘minority’. The Muslims are certainly not a non-dominant religious graoup because they have ruled over India for nearly 1100 years and now suddenly  they cannot claim to be backward. They have always been a very demanding and domineering group even during British rule. The Sachar Committee Report aims at bestowing unmerited benefits on the Muslim community, without evolving a rational criterion to assess ‘backwardness’ because of vote-bank politics.

The PIL was filed by former director general of Assam police Shri Ram Kumar Ohri IPS (Retd.) for Patriot’s forum.R K Ohriji and all the Office Bearers and Members of the Patriots’ Forum have to be congratulated by more than 800 millions of Hindus in India for having displayed such a tremendous public spirit and unsullied patriotism in these decadent days when high treason, ever vigilant national sabotage and national subversion have become the whole time official occupation of men at the highest levels of authority in the UPA Government in New Delhi.

Responses