Review reservations

The Parsi community which has made "outstanding contributions in the fields of industry, commerce and education” should be given nominations in the Rajya Sabha and the two state assemblies of Maharashtra and Gujarat where reside the maximum number of their population, recommended chairman of the National Commission for Minorities (NCM), Tarlochan Singh, as reported in The Times of India of April 3, 2005.

"The suggestion is not new,” states the news report, adding, "The NCM has, in fact, made similar recommendations in the past, even asking for reservation for Parsis in institutions set up by their own community members. But the community has not shown much enthusiasm...”

Trying to show that it can stand on its own feet in the face of competition and reservations granted by the government to socially and economically backward communities, many community youngsters were denied admission to prestigious institutions founded by Parsi stalwarts. "Parsis have been forced to rethink their policy,” commented the Mid Day of February 1, 2005 report­ing how the NCM has asked the Bombay Parsi Punchayet (BPP) to identify these educational institutions "so that some kind of reservation policy can be put into place.”

As per a 1991 Supreme Court ruling, if an educational insti­tution is managed by a certain community, that group has the right to reserve some seats for their students. In Bombay several minority groups reserve up to 50 percent of seats in educational institutions for members of their own community. With such pres­tigious institutes like the Grant Medical College and Victoria Jubilee Technical Institute (VJTI) in Bombay "we do want at least five or six seats in (such) institu­tions...We are not looking at 50 percent reservations. Our community is too small for that,” Lt Gen Adi Sethna, the Zoroastrian representative on the NCM was quoted in the Mid Day report, excerpted in The BPP Review (winter 2004/2005).