Hindu minority status: SC gives Centre more time to hold consultations with states

A bench of Justices S K Kaul and Abhay S Oka granted the government six more weeks’ time and posted the matter for hearing to October 19.

The court is hearing a clutch of petitions which have challenged the provisions of the National Commission for Minorities Act, 1992 that gives the Centre the power to notify minorities.

The main petition by advocate Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay has relied on the SC decision in the landmark 2002 TMA Pai case in which it was laid down that for the purposes of Article 30 that deals with the rights of minorities to establish and administer educational institutions, religious and linguistic minorities will have to be identified at the state level. Upadhyay pointed out that Hindus have become a minority in many states and some Union Territories as per the 2011 census and have sought minority status for them in these places.

Appearing for Upadhyay, senior advocate told the Bench that he found the Centre’s stand a “little funny”. He pointed out that the Act says minorities for the purposes of the Act means minorities notified as such by the central government. “Now after TMA Pai (case), the central government can’t do it. So whatever deliberations they are doing under this Act cannot confirm minority status to anybody in a state…”.

Justice Kaul said “…this is not a straight-jacket formula” and went on to grant more time to the government.

The Centre, after dragging its feet for long, finally responded to the plea after the SC imposed a cost of Rs 7500 on it.

In a counter affidavit filed on March 25, after repeated prodding from the court, the government sought to put the onus of granting minority status to Hindus upon states saying “they too have concurrent powers to do so”. With the stand drawing criticism, it filed a new affidavit on May 9 “in supersession of the earlier affidavit” saying “the power is vested with the Centre to notify minorities”.

The Ministry of Minority Affairs said that matter has “far-reaching ramifications”, and sought more time for discussions with “state governments and other stakeholders”.

This change in stand earned the ire of the Bench headed by Justice Kaul who said “they have turned turtle…It seems to an extent to back out from what was stated earlier, something we don’t appreciate…What I am not able to understand is (that) Union of India is not able to decide what it wants to do…”. The court, however, allowed the Centre’s request for time to carry out the discussions and fixed the matter for a hearing on August 30.

A day ahead of Tuesday’s hearing, the Minority Affairs Ministry filed an affidavit in the court Monday urging it to defer the hearing saying it had held discussions with eight states and two Union Territories and that they had sought more time for wider consultations with the stakeholders.

The Centre said it “has already held meetings with the state governments of Nagaland, Punjab, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, and the Union Territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh…they requested for some more time for wider consultations…considering the far-reaching implications of the issue involved.”