On Friday, the Karnataka government announced its decision to abolish the 4% quota for minorities and add it to the existing quotas for two major communities in the poll-bound state.

The 4% reservation given to Muslims under the OBC Category 2B category will now be divided into two equal parts and added to the existing quota of Vokkaligas and Lingayats, for which two new reservation categories, 2C and 2D last year.

The Cabinet decided to place religious minorities under the EWS category. The decision was made ahead of assembly elections.

Briefing reporters after the cabinet meeting, Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai said the quota for religious minorities would be removed, and they would be included in the 10% pool of EWS categories with no changes.

“The 4% (Minority Reservation) will be split between 2C and 2D. The 4% Reservation for Vokkaligas and others will increase to 6%, and Veerashaiva Panchamasali and others (Lingayats) getting 5% reservation now will get 7%,” explained CM.

In December last year, the Cabinet abolished reserved categories 3A and 3B for Vokkaligas and Lingayats, respectively, replacing them with two new categories, 2C and 2D.

Bommai defended the decision to remove the quota for Muslims, saying there is no provision in the constitution for religious minorities.

Citing a court decision rejecting Andhra Pradesh’s reservations for minorities, the CM said B R Ambedkar, the founder of the Indian Constitution, had also said that reservations were for castes.

“However, we cannot completely drop that community. Given that religious minorities should not have any problems if someone challenges the reservation against them, we decided to take a positive decision. In fact, they will go from 4% to 10% pool of the EWS group without any changes,” Bommai explained.

Muslims are divided into three reservation categories – 1, 2A and 2B.

Extremely backward religious minorities, which form sub-sets of Muslims like Pinjara, Nadaf, Daroji and Chapparband, are included in category 1 and will remain undisturbed and on the same reserved list.

Likewise, the government has not touched the Muslim community under category 2A.

“Some other Muslim sub-sects in category 2B will not be disturbed. They will just be transferred to the EWS quota under the same conditions,” Bommai said.

There are also small backward communities that are mentioned in the report of the Backward Commission.

They never appear in any list, including the backward list. They do not belong to any category. Regarding them the Backward Commission mentioned them in its second list. I will study the report in detail. Our government will make a further decision on this in the upcoming Cabinet.

A recommendation has been sent to the Centre to include the two shepherd communities, ‘Kadu Kuruba’ and ‘Gonda Kuruba’, spread across the four districts of the ST category.

Also, the union government has referred to two to three communities, including Kadu Gollaru and Koli communities, for input from the ministry. Bommai also said the government would notify communities under the EWS category.

Also, the decision regarding the SC community was that 6% of reservations would be given to the SC Left subcategory, 5.5% to the SC Right subcategory, 4.5% to touchables and 1% to Other. Adichunchanagiri Math pontiff and Vokkaliga leader Nirmalanandanatha Swami welcomed the announcement and said the 12% was requested to be retained considering the state of the community.

“Given this situation, the government has increased the retention rate from 4% to 6%, and we are grateful to the government. We welcome the move,” he said.

The Lingayat sect and the Panchamasali community of the Vokkaligas have long called for the reservation to be raised.