According to advocate P N Lekhi, who filed the PIL on behalf of Patriots’ Forum, they sought to know whether the Sachar panel report had not treated the Muslims in a manner inconsistent with the treatment given to other recognised minorities; whether it was tainted with the logic of racial compartmentalisation and communitarianism; whether it did not promise the rise of political Islam in India in violation of the Constitution; whether Muslims, who had “ruled” the peninsula, could be treated as a minority; and whether it did not degenerate into the process initiated by the “pre-August14,1947, days of collecting Muslims under the banner of Islam”.

The Centre had set up Justice Rajinder Sachar Committee to look into the social, economic and educational status of Muslims and suggest ways to improve it. Its report was presented to the Parliament on November 30, 2006.

Lekhi said that any promotion of Muslims as a religious community would result in “destruction” of the secular polity promised by the Constitution and was thus against its basic structure. “The petition wishes to know whether the terms of reference of the Sachar Committee are not an extension of the Pakistan resolution of 1940 made in Lahore,” he said. Lekhi claimed that the Sachar report ran contrary to all Supreme Court judgments on secularism.

Arguing that the Committee’s recommendations were made on an irrational basis, he claimed that the Sachar Committee itself had said that in nine states the Muslims were educationally more advanced than other communities.

Patriots’ Forum Secretary General R K Ohri told The Indian Express that the Forum had sent two written representations to the Sachar panel in October 2005 and May 18, 2006, but got no response. He said that the panel had ignored four “globally accepted human development indicators — infant mortality, child mortality, degree of urbanisation, and life expectancy at birth — where Muslims were better off than Hindus”. “Muslims’ lower per capita income is because of higher population growth rate and lower work participation rates among their women,” he claimed. The next hearing has been fixed for February.