Monday, December 19 2005 14:30 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: Resolving their differences, National Democratic Alliance (NDA) leaders today (Dec 19,2005) unanimously decided to oppose a Constitution Amendment Bill providing reservation in private educational institutions but exempting minority institutions from its purview.

"There should be reservation for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and socially and educationally backward classes in Government and non-Governmental institutions, aided or unaided," he said.

"It should be applicable to all institutions and we have unanimously agreed that the clause exempting minority institutions should not be there," Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) spokesman V K Malhotra told sources after a 75-minute long meeting of the alliance leaders.

Demanding that there should be reservation for Dalits and Backward Classes among minority community in the minority institutions, the NDA leaders decided to move amendments to the bill when it is introduced in Parliament.

"Moreover, definition of minorities is not clear. There are institutions run by linguistic minorities where majority of the students are from majority linguistic community," Malhotra said.

Earlier, key NDA ally Janata Dal (JD) United (U) had reservations about the BJP's opposition to the Bill as it did not want to be seen as adopting an anti-minority stance.

The meeting chaired by Leader of Opposition L K Advani was attended among others by Prabhunath Singh and Digvijay Singh JD(U), Braja Kishore Tripathy and B J Panda Biju Janata Dal (BJD) and Dinesh Trivedi (Trinamul Congress) besides senior BJP leaders Jaswant Singh, Murli Manhor Joshi, Sushma Swaraj and Malhotra.