States can declare any religion, community as minority: Center tells Supreme Court

The affidavit filed in the apex court by the Union Ministry of Minority Affairs said, “State governments linguistic community as a minority community within the state.”

For example, Maharashtra declared Jews a minority community in 2016 and Karnataka notified Urdu, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, Marathi, Tulu, Lamani, Hindi, Konkani and Gujarati languages ​​as minority languages.

The Centre’s affidavit was filed on the basis of a plea by advocate Ashwini Upadhyay that as per the 2011 census, Hindus were a minority in Lakshadweep, Mizoram, Nagaland, Meghalaya, Jammu and Kashmir, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur and Punjab.

Upadhyay had requested that Hindus in the above states should be given minority status as per the principle laid down by the Supreme Court in the TMA Pai Foundation judgment of 2002.

The petition sought a direction to the Center to provide guidelines for identification of minorities at the state level, stating that Hindus are a minority in 10 states and are not able to take advantage of the schemes meant for minorities. .

In the TMA Pai case, the top court had held that for the purposes of Article 30 relating to the rights of minorities to establish and administer educational institutions, religious and linguistic minorities should be treated state-wise.

Under Section 2(c) of the National Commission for Minorities Act, 1992, the Center had notified five communities – Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists, Parsis and Christians – as minorities in 1993.

The issue of identity of religious and linguistic minorities cannot be straightened out and “religious and linguistic minorities are spread throughout the country and do not belong to or restricted to any one State/Union Territory of India. India is characterized by very unique characteristics.” country. A religious group which is in majority in one state may be a minority in another state,” the Center said.