Click to play videoNew Delhi: Minority Affairs Minister A R Antulay is to submitted the Centre's Action Taken Report on the Sachar Committee report in Parliament on Friday.
Tabling the statement in Lok Sabha, Antulay hailed the move saying, "It is a historic occasion and it is a historic statement."
Last week, he had told Lok Sabha that the government had accepted all but three of the several recommendations and suggestions of the Sachar panel, all of which would be unveiled in Parliament.
The Sachar Committee, headed by Justice Rajinder Sachar, had found that Muslims lag behind on all socio-economic indices, such as education, health and employment.
The Cabinet had earlier discussed the Prime Minister's 15-point programme to implement the Sachar Panel recommendations.
The Centre, however, remained silent on the Sachar Committee's recommendation favouring reservation for the most backward in the 150-million strong community.
The Government intends to initiate special coaching and scholarship schemes for minority students. The center also wants to identify Muslim-dominated districts for running special schemes.
As per the recommendations in the report, an Equal Opportunities Commission will be set up along with a nomination procedure for their political involvement at the grassroots.
The Government also intends to set aside a portion of priority sector loans, especially in agriculture and industry, for minorities. Public sector banks will open more branches in Muslim concentrated areas and 15 per cent of the priority sector lendings will go to Muslims in the next three years.
It will try improving basic amenities in 90 identified minority concentrated districts and 338 towns.
The Sachar Committee, constituted by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in March 2005, had made comprehensive recommendations for "setting the community on the road to progress".
It pointed out that the percentage of Muslims in Government employment was a mere 4.9 per cent of the total 88,44,669 employees, indicating that all was not well for the 150 million Muslim population in the country.
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