The BJP was doing this to provoke non-Muslim BCs against the Congress government, he said.
Hyderabad: Government adviser Mohammed Ali Shabbir accused the BJP of misleading the public by falsely claiming that the Congress government had included Muslims in the BC category through the recent caste survey. The BJP was doing this to provoke non-Muslim BCs against the Congress government, he said.
At a press conference on Tuesday at Gandhi Bhavan, Shabbir Ali criticised Union ministers G. Kishan Reddy, Bandi Sanjay Kumar and Rajya Sabha MP Dr K. Laxman for making such claims. He labelled their claims factually incorrect and hypocritical, pointing out that BJP-led governments both at the Centre and in several states had classified Muslim communities as BCs. He questioned why the BJP-led Central government and BJP-ruled states continued to recognise Muslim OBCs if they were against the idea.
Shabbir Ali pointed out that Muslim communities had been recognised as OBCs for decades in several states under both Congress and BJP-led governments. Shabbir Ali further accused the BJP of spreading fear among non-Muslim OBCs by claiming that Muslim reservations were diminishing their opportunities.
He clarified that the four per cent reservation for Muslim OBCs in Telangana was a separate quota under Group E, meaning it did not affect the share of non-Muslim OBCs. Regarding the pending Supreme Court case on the matter, Shabbir Ali explained that the case concerned the technical aspects of reservation policy implementation, not eligibility.
He emphasised that the Telangana government was not creating a new category but only ensuring the proper implementation of an existing quota.
Shabbir Ali referred to data from the recent caste survey, which showed that 10.08 per cent of Telangana’s Muslims belong to OBC categories, while 2.48 per cent fall under the OC category. This, he said, proved that only genuinely backward groups were classified as OBCs.
He stressed that the OBC classification was never religion-based, noting that many Hindu OBC communities shared similar socio-economic conditions as Muslim OBC groups. He accused the BJP of trying to communalise an issue that was fundamentally about backwardness. He concluded that the BJP’s statements in Telangana were misleading, aiming to provoke hostility between different backward communities.
