Minorities
The Wire reviewed seven FIRs filed in 2022 across various police stations in Mathura, including Kotwali, Highway, Sadar Bazaar, and Govind Nagar. It found that these FIRs were mere copies of each other with names and dates changed.
Lalit Chauhan, a Mathura-based Congress leader, said that he fails to find any logic in the way this law is being used in the state. Chauhan said that the law is purely being deployed to harass and jail Muslims to the extent of ruining their existence as a community.
Commenting on the FIRs, he said, “Just take a cursory look at the FIRs. The police are grossly misusing this law against Muslims and Dalits across Uttar Pradesh, not just Mathura. Knowing well that Muslims are a meat-eating community, they target them. Without even confirming whether the ‘caught meat’ was at all of the cow, they jail Muslims. Procedurally, they need to assess the meat sample in a lab, only then can they pronounce a jail term,” he explained.
04/09/2023
While Muslims were removed from the 2B Backward Class category (which they had been made a part of in 1994) through the March 27 order, Christians and Jains are classified under the 2D category. https://thewire.in/politics/karnataka-muslims-excluded-but-jains-christians-eligible-for-backward-classes-quota
As The Wire has reported, the BJP government removed the 4% reservation that the Muslims had so far accessed and added the same equally between the state’s powerful caste groups – Lingayats and Vokkaligas – taking their quota to 5% and 7%, respectively. The Muslims have been moved to the EWS (economically weaker sections) category which has a total of 10%; they have to share the same with a few groups like the Jains and Brahmins.
31/03/2023