New Delhi:
The United Progressive Alliance or UPA government is all set to woo the minorities with a new law to provide equal opportunity in both education and employment.
The Minority Affairs Ministry is preparing a Cabinet note to set up an Equal Opportunities Commission, based on the recommendations of Justice Sachar committee.
The timing of the move is significant with national elections due by May. The Sachar committee recommendations were made during UPA-I, but the Congress-led government is moving ahead with the recommendations only now.
The Equal Opportunities Commission will be a statutory body that seeks to ensure that minority communities are not discriminated against on religious grounds. The body seeks to redress complaints that people from minority communities don't find adequate representation in government employment or educational institutions.
The panel will also deal with complaints like housing societies denying accommodation or buying rights to people from a particular religious background. "We have seen advertisements in newspapers where it is mentioned that a particular society does not encourage Muslims. That's illegal and a statutory body like this can take care of such complaints," an official familiar with the Cabinet note on equal opportunities commission said.
Minority Affairs minister K Rehman Khan confirmed to NDTV that his ministry is considering a new bill to set up the body. "We plan to bring a bill to set up the statutory body in the coming session of Parliament," he said.
The Sachar Committee that studied the socio-economic condition of the minorities in India had noted that though Muslims constituted 18.5 per cent of the population, their representation in bureaucracy was just about 2.5 per cent. It had recommended that a statutory body on the lines of an equal opportunities commission in United Kingdom might address the problem.