Supreme Court seeks ‘concrete’ examples of Hindus being denied minority status in states
New Delhi, July 18
As a PIL demanded minority status for Hindus in states where they were outnumbered by members of other communities, the Supreme Court on Monday asked the petitioner to come up with “concrete” examples of Hindus being denied minority status at the state level.
“We are not able to understand what injury the petitioner is claiming… We are going ahead with these challenges in the air,” a Bench led by Justice UU Lalit told senior counsel Arvind Datar, who represented petitioner Devkinandan Thakur, a religious preacher.
Thakur has challenged certain provisions of the National Commission for Minorities (NCM) Act and sought a direction to the Centre to define “minority” and prescribe guidelines for the identification of minorities at the district level.
Datar said a 1993 notification says six communities –Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, Parsi, and Jain — are minorities at the national level, and court judgments say minorities have to be notified by states.
Maintaining that a Christian institution claiming minority status in Mizoram will be a reversal of the situation, the Bench asked, “Are you (petitioner) denied the minority status in any state?”
As Datar said that he was talking about Hindus being denied minority status and the general perception that Hindus can’t be a minority, the Bench said it could examine the issue only if there was a concrete case of Hindus being denied a minority status.
Talking about linguistic minorities, the Bench said Kannada-speaking people in Maharashtra were a minority. “If a Sikh institution claims minority status in Punjab, then it’s a travesty of justice,” it said.
Maintaining that minority status of a community was decided on the basis of population in a particular state, the Bench asked for “concrete examples” where Hindus were denied minority status in a state despite being in numerical minority.
The Bench deferred the hearing for two weeks after Datar sought time in the matter.
During hearing of another PIL on the issue, the top court had on May 10 taken exception to the Centre changing its stand on declaring Hindus as minority in nine states and union territories where they are numerically lesser in number, saying taking different stands won’t help.
A Bench led by Justice SK Kaul had made the comments after it noticed that the Centre, in departure from its earlier stand, said the power to notify minorities was vested in it and any decision in this regard will be taken after discussion with states and other stakeholders. The Ministry of Minority Affairs had earlier submitted that state governments can declare any religious or linguistic community, including Hindus, a minority within the said state.
Asking the Centre to undertake the necessary exercise of consultation, Justice Kaul’s Bench had listed the matter for hearing on August 30.
In his PIL, Thakur said, “Cause of action continues till date because followers of Judaism, Bahaism, and Hinduism; who are real minorities in Ladakh, Mizoram, Lakshadweep, Kashmir, Nagaland, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh, Punjab, Manipur, cannot establish and administer educational institutions of their choice because of non-identification of ‘minority’ at the state level, thus jeopardising their basic rights guaranteed under Article 29-30.”
