LAW MINISTER Salman Khurshid thinks he has done no crime in quoting the minorities “sub-quota” issue in a public meeting at Farrukhabad when the minister assured the community of providing a quota much against the constitutional provisions and to which the Election Commission strongly objected.

This has happened perhaps for the first time in the political history when the Election Commission had to write a letter to the President of India, Pratibha Devi Singh Patil, to intervene in the matter, and the President’s office immediately directing the same to the Prime Minister’s office for an early action.

Khurshid, while campaigning for his wife Louise, a Congress candidate from Farrukhabad assembly constituency in Uttar Pradesh, had announced that his party would increase the sub-quota for minorities to nine per cent, out of the 27 percent Other Backward Classes (OBC) reservation.

The chief election commissioner, S Y Qureshi, taking a strong stand on the controversial statement made by the minister in his address to the electorate present in the meet in Farrukhabad on Saturday, at time when the ‘model code of conduct’ has been put in place in the state of Uttar Pradesh following the ongoing assembly elections, the minister needs to follow certain guidelines enshrined in the ‘code of conduct’ which applies to every political party and candidate in fray, wrote a strong letter to the President of India, and sought a decisive and immediate intervention in the matter.

Now, after the Congress general secretary and chairman of the media department, Janardan Dwivedi, issued a statement saying the Election Commission is a constitutional body. Congress always wants that all Congressmen should speak as per the norms of public life and the law of the land, another senior party leader and general secretary Digvijaya Singh came strongly in defense of the law minister.

Digvijaya said every political party has the right to talk about their programmes during election campaigns and it was not good to keep on targeting political leaders. The political manifestoes are there for the people to tell what the party would do if voted to power and thus Khurshid did nothing unconstitutional and illegal, which should be blown out of proportion by the media or by any other political group.

 Khurshid-Qureshi row now has turned political in Uttar Pradesh. Many political parties have been trying now to hunt the Congress and its style of functioning in the Uttar Pradesh elections. Bharatiya Janta Party senior leader Ravi Shanker Prasad has asked the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh to act now and has also asked for the resignation of Khurshid. Besides, Prasad said the prime minister must also make his stand clear to public on the Muslims’ sub-quota issue without any further delay.

Senior BJP leader Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said, “this was an unconstitutional announcement made by a person sitting on constitutional post, and it clearly shows that Congress still believes in divide and rule policy for political gains.”

Janta Dal United national president Sharad Yadav while talking to the media here in Lucknow, said how reservation can be given to any community on religion basis when there was no such provision in the Indian Constitution. Yadav said this statement by a senior Congress leader clearly reflects that the Congress was desperate to capture power in the state of Uttar Pradesh and hence their leaders have been uttering such catchy statements, which could get them the votes of minorities but this would not happen in the elections as the Muslim community has seen it for the last 60 years what the Congress governments did for them in all these years.