Besides, the Supreme Court has put a cap of 50% on quotas. The 10% quota will jack up reservations to 60%. Will this latest attempt leapfrog the top court bump? The Lok Sabha passed the EWS Quota (124 Amendment) Bill without much ado Tuesday evening. Every party supported it. At the end of the day, the joke was on whom?

Wednesday, ‘Modi’s Masterstroke’ was greeted with ruckus in the Upper House. The bill requires a two-thirds majority to become law. The “masterstroke” is a strike aimed at general elections 2019. The Opposition, especially the Congress, is in a dilemma. After winning MP, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan, it cannot be seen standing against upper castes. The BJP wins either way. There are aspects to the bill which place the bill plonk on the poll-plank.

It’s income-based reservation, a departure from caste-based quota. Strictly-speaking, however, the caste spectrum just went the whole hog and the reservation pie grew bigger by 10%. The Rs 8 lakh income per household per annum and 5 acre land per household also doesn’t sound ‘EWS’. There is also religion in the slideshow – Hindu, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi, Sikh... You name it and they are in it, eligible for reservations in education institutions and central government jobs.

The Lok Sabha also walked through the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill 2019, but only after an acrimonious debate. This bill is no ‘jumla’, it’s serious. Most northeast parties oppose it. Hurt minorities – Hindu, Sikh, Christian, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi – from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan who have been refugees in India for over five years qualify for Indian citizenship. The cut-off date is December 31, 2014. But the bill is being hounded as “divisive”, vile competitor to the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and violative of the Assam Accord.

Opposition parties also see “sinister.” It is “not secular.” Muslims do not figure among the persecuted lot. There are the harassed Shia Muslims in Pakistan. And persecution of Ahmedia Muslims in Pakistan is real, say detractors. Right, but Ahmedias are persecuted in Pakistan because Pakistan doesn’t see them as ‘Muslim.’ Do Indian Muslims consider the Ahmedia as ‘Muslim’?

Anyway, adding ‘Muslim’ to the mix brings national security into focus. And to say that Muslims are persecuted in Muslim-majority countries sounds like a ‘jumla’. Also, “secular’ doesn’t exclusively refer to Muslim-inclusion. The Trinamool demand to include Muslims has a poll-ring to it. Come to think, the sum of the non-Muslim religions also screams ‘general election 2019.’

That is where the BJP’s and the Modi Government’s intentions are suspect. Whether the EWS Quota Amendment bill or the Citizenship Amendment bill, both cut too close to GE 2019. ‘Eve’ is not just a bone from Adam’s rib, it is also ‘just before’ steps taken, primarily to ‘woo’. And elections are when electorate-wooing gets serious. The courtship of vote-banks, with quotas and sops paid for with money drawn from the state treasury against RBI advice is expected.

Read politically, the two bills suggest nervous tension in the BJP. The results of the 5-state elections jolted the party and there are reservations in the BJP if it will be returned to power for a second consecutive time. Will both these bills get real and become class acts? Think of them and ‘abeyance’ is a word that remains suspended in the mind, betwixt and between, up in the air!

Not every pre-poll promise is kept and there is no guarantee that the BJP will return to power to make them law. There is also the Supreme Court cap to take off. Besides, not all politicians are like POTUS Donald Trump, who has shut down government to build ‘The Wall”, a poll-promise he made. What confounds is Indian mainstream media pillorying Trump. No wonder an India-compiled library in Kabul doesn’t figure in Trump’s book as a great accomplishment.

A criticism against the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2019 is that it doesn’t take into account persecuted Hindus in Fiji and Sri Lanka. Trump’s border wall has to do with illegal immigration and US citizenship. And he’s pissed off that a California cop, “legal immigrant” from Fiji, Police Officer Ronil Singh, was shot dead the other night by an illegal immigrant, the bullet fired point-blank to Ronil’s chest. And Indian television media brands Trump’s Border Wall a ‘Jumla.’ Some people don’t know when to shut up. (IPA Service)