India, March 15 -- The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Saturday slammed the Karnataka government's decision to provide a 4% reservation in public tenders for Muslim contractors under the Karnataka Transparency in Public Procurement (KTPP) Act.

BJP leader and former Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad alleged that the reservation was introduced with the "full patronage and approval" of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi. "(chief minister) Siddaramaiah neither has the courage nor the political capital to announce the reservation on his own. There is competitive vote-bank politics at play," he said at a press conference in Delhi.

Prasad further warned that the Congress' approach to reservations was setting "new precedents" that could have broader...