The BJP plans to launch a "massive agitation" against reservation for Muslims.
Dubbing the bill to hike quota for Muslims, which was passed in the Telangana assembly yesterday, as a "trash paper", the BJP today said it has no legal and constitutional sanctity and would be "quashed" at the central government level.
The government of K Chandrasekhar Rao in Telangana has increased quota in jobs and education for Muslims from 4 per cent to 12 per cent fulfilling its pre-election promise. But the BJP has strongly opposed the move calling it communal politics and that it would utilise the issue to politically "rise" in the state.
"At the party level, we are going to utilise this as a great opportunity for BJP's rise in Telangana. At the (central) government level, this will be quashed right at the beginning," BJP spokesperson Krishna Saagar Rao said.
Mr Rao added that during the passage of the bill in both houses, the state government did not follow due process and system. "Religion cannot be a basis for reservations, and legally it's not viable as both the Supreme Court and high court have capped reservations at 50 per cent," he said.
The local BJP unit will move court challenging the bill. "They (the government) haven't followed the correct process, so the bill is just like a trash paper, it does not have any validity. It will not stand the scrutiny of courts," he said.
In the recently concluded BJP national executive meeting in Bhubaneswar, this issue has been discussed and the bill would go "no further", he said.
"The government has been irresponsible and the bill has undermined the rightful constitutional reservation for Backward Classes," he said. The party would launch a "massive agitation" against reservation for Muslims, Mr Rao said.
"It (the agitation) is not going to be reactive one... one day or two days. We are going to expose Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) duplicity through one to one-and-half years leading up to elections," he said.
He added the BJP is okay with increasing reservation for Scheduled Tribes from 6 per cent to 10 per cent. The hike takes reservations from the present 50 per cent to 62 per cent in Telangana.
(With inputs from PTI)