Indications are that the Government hopes to make this a key theme if the Left’s resistance to the deal eventually leads to mid-term polls. In fact, sources said that, in Parliament, the UPA is planning to discuss the Sachar Report — which highlighted the glaring gap between Muslims and other communities when it came to representation in education and jobs — before the nuclear deal discussion.

If this can be pulled off, UPA leaders say, it will also help cement the frayed bond between the Left and the Congress as it was on the basis of a fundamental anti-BJP plank that the UPA was formed.

Apart from isolating the BJP, the government hopes this will also serve to gently remind the Left, which takes very strident positions against communalism, of the state of Muslims in the Left-ruled state of West Bengal, which, after Assam has the highest percentage of Muslims, and less than national averages on most indicators, like school enrollment and jobs in government.

The Minority Affairs Ministry, with six other Ministries, has set targets under all heads earmarked in the PM’s 15-point programme on Minorities (including Muslims) announced last June. A key one was credit for minorities.

On August 2, the PMO conveyed the directions of the PM “that the Department of Financial Services/RBI may be advised to commit to a road map laying down specific state-wise annual targets over a period of 3 years to ensure that the level of priority sector lending to minority communities is raised to 15% in compliance of the Cabinet decision.” It is understood that banks were not happy with the plan to ensure that a fixed percentage of the priority credit earmarked for “weaker sections” was to be put aside for minorities.

Resistance to quantifying the amount led to this particular measure taking some time to work out, but now, the PMO has asked the Department of Finance Services to scale up the percentage of priority-sector lending to minorities to 15% of all priority-sector lending over three years. To this effect, the following were identified as the next steps as the RBI has issued instructions to public and private banks: NABARD to set up funds for training and re-skilling minorities; more branches of public sector banks in Muslim-concentration districts; regular monitoring of loan disbursals.