India: Party members rally demanding quota for Muslims; Police detain 43, including MLAs

Scores of Samajwadi Party workers, including Members of the Legislative Assembly, were detained by local police on Monday for trying to march to the Mantralaya from Bhendi Bazaar, demanding 5% reservation for Muslims.

Participants asked the state government to give reservation to the Muslims, too, saying that, “It is deplorable that the government has not honoured the verdict of the Bombay high court which allowed 5% Muslim quota in educational institutions,”

Over two hundred of the Party’s workers took out a rally from their office in Bhendi Bazaar, shouting slogans like “do justice to Muslims” and “give Muslims 5% reservation”

Before they could move further ahead, 43 of them were picked up in vans and brought to Azad Maidan police station and later let off.

The Other Backward Class (OBC) is a collective term used by the Government of India to classify castes which are educationally or socially backward, or underprivileged.

Reservations in India were introduced to rectify the past and historical injustice against the these classes in India, to ensure that equal representation can be seen from people belonging to all castes in the services under the state and centre, and to provide an equal platform for everyone irrespective of their caste.