New Delhi: The Kerala high court has declared CPI(M) MLA A. Raja’s 2021 election from the Devikulam assembly constituency void, citing that he is Christian and thus not qualified to have been elected from a seat reserved for “Scheduled Caste Hindus.”
Justice P. Somarajan said Raja is not a member of the ‘Hindu Parayan’ community within the state of Kerala, LiveLaw has reported.
The petitioner, D. Kumar, had challenged Raja’s election in 2020 on this very ground and claimed that through his election, Section 5 of the Representation of Peoples Act, 1951, has been violated. The law states that a person has to be from a SC or ST community in the state if she wishes to contest from a seat reserved in that state for SC and ST communities in the state.
The court held that the operative phrase in the case was “in that state.”
The case was made by Kumar that Raja wasn’t a part of the Scheduled Castes of Kerala. He pointed out that the ‘Hindu Parayan’ community – which Raja claimed he was a member of – is a Scheduled Caste under the State of Tamil Nadu in Part XVI of the Schedule to the Constitution (Schedule Castes) Order, 1950.
Raja’s paternal grandparents were residents of Thirunelveli in Tamil Nadu and had migrated to Kerala in 1951, and his parents and Raja are Christians, the petitioner said.
Raja refuted this and said that his grandparents had come to Kerala in the 1940s, and not after the 1950 Order. He added that his grandparents had prayed for a child at a local church, and when his father was born, he was given a Christian name. His mother was not Esther, but Easwari, Raja further said.
Kumar also said in his petition that his objection to the Returning Officer had been rejected “without assigning any valid reason” in 2021, when the state went to the assembly polls. Raja was elected by a margin of 7,848 votes.
In the Supreme Court in December, the Union government had declared that the 2007 report of the Justice Ranganath Misra Commission for Religious and Linguistic Minorities, which recommended that Dalits who converted to Islam and Christianity to escape caste oppression in the Hindu religion should be permitted to avail of Scheduled Caste (SC) reservation benefits in government jobs and educational institutions, was “flawed” and composed within the “four walls of a room”.
The union government has appointed a Justice KG Balakrishnan-led Commission – in October 2022 – which will submit its report to consider the pleas of Dalits Christians and Muslims to be included in reservation quotas, within two years.