As debates continue over the State government’s move to implement reservation for economically weaker sections (EWS) among the forward communities, the Syro-Malabar church on Wednesday launched a scathing attack on the United Democratic Front (UDF) for its ambiguous position on the issue.
In an article titled ‘Why intolerance over economic reservation’, published in Deepika, the official mouth-piece of the church, Metropolitan Archbishop Mar Joseph Perumthottam sought to know whether the UDF system had become so anaemic to even register its opinion on the matter. It further accused the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) of being communal in opposing the economic reservation.
“About 27% of the population in the State belong to the non-reservation categories who have never enjoyed any benefit of this scheme till now. The move to ensure equal justice to this category of people has not come too soon and it is so unfortunate to see that a few community organisations are still opposing this. There are no reasons whatsoever to think that they have adopted a principled stance on the matter,” it read.
Accusing the UDF of losing control over its legislators, the Metropolitan sharply criticised the coalition’s proposed association with the Welfare Party. “It seems this alliance will not be even able to come out with an election manifesto,” he said.
The article further elaborated on the need to uphold secularism in a plural society and warned against the tendency among some political organisations of taking particular communities for granted. “This land embraces a cross-section of people and the alliances should be able to consider all reasonable demands by different sections. However, the attempts by the coalitions to align with communal forces for votes will only help raise concerns among the other sections,” it noted.
Meanwhile, the article lauded the Left parties as well as the Bharatiya Janata Party for coming clean on the issue.
Incidentally, the article came out with only a few hours left for the Congress-led coalition convene a meeting of its political affairs committee to decide its position on the EWS reservation.
