The Congress is ready with a trump card in the upcoming Uttar Pradesh assembly elections: 6 percent reservation to Muslims in the government jobs and higher education. It believes stoking the quota fire will pay dividends in the elections. The ministries of home, law, minority affairs and social justice are engaged in giving finishing touches to the proposal to declare it before the UP polls (scheduled by May next year).

The move won't require parliament's nod as a concept note prepared by the ministry of social justice last week envisages its implementation through a simple gazette notification that can be issued after the union cabinet takes the decision. It would benefit a vast majority of the Muslims accounting for India's 13.4 percent population.

It will be an answer to chief minister Mayawati playing the deft card of the assembly adopting a resolution to split Uttar Pradesh into four states to give a boost to the sagging popularity of her Bahujan Samaj Party.

The Congress core group decided to counter it with the Muslim reservation after noting that it would be counter-productive to oppose her move since people who have to make long journeys to Lucknow even for small work will latch on it as happened in carving of Uttarakhand out of Uttar Pradesh, a top party source said.

The proposed reservation won't be religion-based, not allowed under the Indian constitution, but extended on the twin grounds of economic and social backwardness of the Muslims by earmarking a 6 percent sub-quota for them in the existing 27 percent reservation of the other backward classes (OBCs).

The Muslim communities to get the benefit will be notified by expanding the list of the OBCs as done only last week by adding 50 castes from 20 states, including Andhra Pradesh, Goa and Maharashtra, in the list by the ministry of social justice on the recommendations of the national commission for backward classes.

Uttar Pradesh has 18 percent Muslim population as per the 2001 census, while their number is quite large, around 24 percent, including the Muslim Jats, in western UP, close to Delhi, to swing the poll fortunes of whichever party they vote, that too mostly en bloc as seen in the past elections.

Both Mayawati and former chief minister and Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav have already got a whiff of the Congress move as Mayawati shot out a letter to the prime minister demanding the Muslim quota while Mulayam lashed out at the Congress trying to usurp his Muslim agenda and led his party colleagues in the Lok Sabha for the last two days to join the logjam with loud demand for 10 percent Muslim quota.

Mulayam is an OBC leader and as such he is campaigning for separate quota to Muslims and not by making inroads into the existing OBC quota. He is a votary of implementation of the recommendations of the Justice (retired) Ranganath Misra Commission and Sachar committee in totality. "There should not be any deviation from these recommendations as these bodies were set up by the Congress itself," he affirmed.

AJIT DILEMMA: No surprise if the advantage of the Muslim card in western UP encourages the Congress to drop its electoral alliance with the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) of Ajit Singh who continues to have a sway in the region because of his late father Charan Singh, a former PM and the tallest leader of the Jat community. Ajit may himself spurn the deal as his party colleagues fear the Muslim quota will eat into the Jat's share in the OBC.

A cunning Ajit has, however, not made his stand clear on the issue because he can't afford to make the Muslims angry and lose their support in western UP which is his bastion. His party enjoys support of the huge chunk of Muslims, including the Muslim Jats, in the region.

The electoral alliance deal is already stuck since Ajit wants berths in the union ministry for himself and his MP son that Manmohan Singh is reported to have declined. Rahul Gandhi, who worked out the poll arrangement with him, has already conveyed to him that the ministerial berth is the PM's prerogative and has to be left to him after the RLD formally signs the electoral pact with the Congress.

AP MODEL: Meanwhile, the concept note for the Muslim quota is believed to rely more or less on the Andhra Pradesh model for the affirmative action of providing 4 per cent reservation to the socially and economically backward Muslims in government jobs and education.

It reportedly cites similar reservation carved out for Muslims from the OBC quota in three other southern states of Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. While Tamil Nadu raised the OBC reservation to 30 per cent to carve out 3.5 per cent share to Muslims and Christians, it were the Congress governments in Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and Karnataka that injected the Muslim reservation in their respective states.

The Muslim reservation will meet the forgotten promise of the Congress in its 2004 Lok Sabha election manifesto to adopt "this policy for socially and educationally backward sections among Muslims and other religious minorities on a national scale."

MISRA REPORT: In a series of meetings of the concerned ministries and the government agencies convened over the last two years by the Home Ministry to hammer out the government's approach on the Ranganath Misra Commission report, the consensus was on the second option of giving the Muslims a share in the 27 percent OBC quota.

Not approved was the option, as suggested by Justice (retd) Misra, to give 10 per cent reservation to Muslims and another 5 per cent to other minorities. Misra, who retired as the Chief Justice of India, has been the chairman of the National Human Rights Commission as also a Congress MP in the Rajya Sabha.

Sources said there were also no takers to his other recommendation of reservation to Muslims and Christians also from within the 15 percent quota for Scheduled Castes (SCs). "We are going by his logic that minorities, especially Muslims, should be regarded as 'Backward' in view of their very poor under-representation in the government services," an official associated with the final concept note said.

In its report, the Commission, set up in 2005, had noted that the concept of caste is prevalent among Muslims and Christians and as such the downtrodden or 'Dalit' among them must be extended reservation enjoyed by their counterparts among Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhists.

BEFORE POLLS NOTIFIED: The Congress poll managers believe announcement of the Muslim reservation ahead of the Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh will reflect in the results as it will serve two goals. First, it will consolidate the Congress base among the minorities and second, it will reduce the OBC vote bank of Mulayam's Samajwadi Party.

They want the decision early in December, lest the Election Commission slaps a ban on any announcements by declaring the elections. The government's difficulty, however, is that it has to wait till the end of the current Parliament session on December 21 as major decisions are not taken outside Parliament when in session.