The ministry has released the exact figures of employment given to Muslims during the past three years in railways, nationalized banks, public sector undertakings and paramilitary forces.

According to the statistics, the jobs for Muslims in the paramilitary forces have risen from 2700 to 3879, and that in the public sector from 1453 to 3893. The total number of jobs given to Muslims during the past three years in government and public sector undertakings has gone up from 6311 to 12450, the report stated.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has taken the lead in giving more employment opportunities to Muslims in the government sector. All departments have taken serious cognizance of the Prime Minister’s directive to give more jobs to Muslims.

Muslim leaders admit that due to the very low percentage of higher education in the Muslim community, Muslims find it difficult to get government jobs in higher grades. However, some Muslim leaders deliberately issue provocative statements of government discriminating in giving employment to Muslims, said a retired Muslim high court judge.

Meanwhile in another community-related development, Justice Rajinder Sachar, chairman of the Sachar Committee, on Sunday called upon the Muslim community to focus on education. He also urged them to launch a movement to implement the panel report.

Sachar said that it was necessary for the Muslim community to focus on education in order to raise its standards. Muslims, he said, were only a religious minority in India and that they were not outsiders.

The former chief justice of the Delhi high court further stated that the Sachar Committee studied the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) results for two years, and in one of the years, they found that 6.7 percent out of the total number of candidates who passed the IAS exams were Muslims. Unfortunately, out of the four hundred thousand candidates that sat the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) exams, very few were Muslims. Yet, it must be said that even this small number of candidates appearing in the exams was very encouraging and therefore Muslims must focus on education, he said.

Sachar said that if more Muslims had appeared for the UPSC exams, the success rate could have been much better and referred to this years UPSC topper who was a Kashmiri Muslim adding that this Muslim boy was an inspiration for many in the country.