SC asks Centre, J&K to sit and decide minority panel issue

Satya Prakash

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, March 27

The Supreme Court on Monday asked the Centre and Jammu and Kashmir government to sit together and take a considered decision on setting up of a minority commission for the state.

Terming it a “very very important issue”, a bench headed by Chief Justice of India JS Khehar asked them to deal with it jointly. It asked both the Centre and state government also to decide if Muslims can be treated as minority in the state where they outnumber other religious groups.

It asked both the governments to resolve the issue and submit a report to it in four weeks.

On behalf of the Centre, Additional Solicitor General Tushar Mehta said the issue was being examined.

Senior advocate Gopal Subramanium, who represented the Jammu and Kashmir government, said he had advised the state to resolve the issue in a positive manner.

The top court had on February 6 pulled up the Centre for not filing its response to a public interest petition seeking creation of a minority commission in Jammu and Kashmir and had imposed a fine of Rs 30,000 on the Centre for delay in filing its response to the petition.

Even as the Narendra Modi government dithered on the issue, the Mehbooba Mufti-led PDP-BJP government of Jammu and Kashmir had opposed creation of a minority commission in the state, saying it was not the only state where minorities declared under the National Commission for Minorities Act were in majority and there was no such body.

In an affidavit filed in the top court last month, the Jammu and Kashmir government had opposed a petition filed by advocate Ankur Sharma in 2016 seeking a direction to the state to set up a minority commission in the state to safeguard the interests of religious and linguistic minorities.   

The state government’s affidavit stated: “There are other states/Union Territories in the country where such population (declared minorities under the NCM Act) is in majority. The situation is similar in the states of Meghalaya, Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Punjab and Lakshadweep.”

Opposing the PDP-BJP government’s stand, petitioner Sharma told the bench that crores of rupees were being squandered away as the state was spending money on unidentified minorities.

“This has to be stopped,” Sharma submitted.

He accused the state government of treating the Muslims, who accounted for 68.31 per cent of the total population in the state in the 2011 Census, as a minority community. He termed it “arbitrary, unreasonable and illegal”.

But the PDP-BJP government asserted that it was wrong to assume that by not extending the NCM Act, 1992, the benefit available to the minorities declared under the Act could not be extended to Jammu and Kashmir.

Maintaining that it’s a settled legal position that courts can’t direct the government to legislate on a particular subject, the state government had said: “It is for the state legislature to consider in its own wisdom as to which laws are required to be made considering the circumstances prevailing in a state.”

Earlier, it had said the central Act was not applicable to the state and as such it did not have to set up a state-level minorities’ commission.

Sharma said his representations to the authorities for setting up a state minorities’ commission to identify and notify the minorities in Jammu and Kashmir had fallen on deaf ears. The petitioner said he was forced to approach the SC as the state high court had refused to even list a PIL on the issue for preliminary hearing, without citing any reason.

The Central government had issued a notification under the National Commission for Minorities Act, 1992, on October 23, 1993, identifying Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists and Parsis (Zoroastrians) as national minorities. In 2014, Jains were added to the list.

“But the state of Jammu and Kashmir has to date neither notified any of the communities as minorities in the state of Jammu and Kashmir nor has legislated a state minority commission Act providing for a state minority commission which may safeguard the interests of religious and linguistic minorities in the state,” the PIL said.