In another blow to equality, the Supreme Court has revoked the Andhra Pradesh High court’s decision and re-instated the 4% reservation to Muslims. Chief Justice KG Balakrishnan opined that when socially and educationally backward societies in the Hindu community are availing of the reservations, the same can be extended to similar groups in the Muslim community.

With the Supreme Court re-instating the Muslim reservations, Andhra Pradesh has reached the 50% cap set on reservations. It is probably only a matter of time that the socially backward classes in the Christian community are allotted reservation as well.

Reservations were a result of casteism in the Hindu society. They were introduced for the upliftment of the people belonging to SC and ST groups and later extended to OBCs. Today, these very groups have turned into electoral vote banks for politicians. And term after term, these socially backward classes are being exploited by the politicians to continue their term in the people’s office.

The basic idea behind the introduction of reservations was to review the progress of the sections of the society that were provided with reservations every 5 years and eventually abolish reservations. But 60 years after the introduction of the reservations in our constitution, they are only being increased further. Infact, apart from the existing caste-based reservations, new types of reservations like gender-based ones were introduced. Would India be free of reservations, EVER?

http://www.krishnachaitanya.in/blog/2010/03/supreme-court-restores-muslim-reservations/