Former Chief Justice of India K.G. Balakrishnan, who heads the Inquiry Commission into whether Dalit converts to religions other than Sikhism or Buddhism should get Scheduled Caste status, on May 7 said his panel could deliver its report in a year, and that too before the election year of 2024.
But, at the same time, the retired top judge said the Inquiry Commission had not yet been provided with “all the facilities”.
“All the facilities have not been provided… Office space has been provided, other things are not… If work starts, it [the report] will take only a year, that is what I feel. It will finish before 2024,” Justice Balakrishnan told The Hindu in a phone interaction on Sunday.
However, Justice Balakrishnan denied any delay on the part of the government in providing the facilities. “The government is moving,” he said.
The Commission has been given two years to complete its task.
The former Chief Justice’s confidence about finishing the assigned task in a year, that is, in half the time given by the government, may be significant in a debate that rages in the Supreme Court on whether it should wait for the Justice Balakrishnan Commission report to come out before deciding a series of petitions seeking Scheduled Caste status for Dalit converts to Christianity.
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These petitions have been pending in the apex court for 19 years. The government has asked the Supreme Court to stall till the Justice Balakrishnan Commission report is out. But the court sounded sceptical in the last hearing on April 12.
“You may have one Commission today and another tomorrow. Different political dispensations may come and bring different political ideologies to the issue. Twenty years have gone by. So much material has been collected through the years. Now, you constitute a new Commission. Tomorrow, this Commission may also end up with the same scenario,” Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul had told the government.
“Let us hear this case which has been pending for 19 years. Why shy away?” Justice Ahsanuddin Amanullah, the other judge on the Bench, had observed.
Justice Amanullah had disagreed with the government’s assessment that the 2007 report of the Justice Ranganath Misra Commission for Religious and Linguistic Minorities was “flawed”.
“Are you sure? You probably need to re-check. It is not that perfunctory. You are making a generalised statement on this report,” Justice Amanullah had said in court.
The 2007 report had recommended that Dalits who converted to Islam and Christianity to escape caste oppression in the Hindu religion should be permitted to avail Scheduled Caste reservation benefits in government jobs and educational institutions. The government had argued that the Ranganath Misra report was “myopic” and composed within the “four walls of a room”.
The petitioners’ lawyers, including senior advocates C.U. Singh and Colin Gonsalves and advocates Prashant Bhushan, Franklin Caesar Thomas had urged the court to not wait for the Justice Balakrishnan report. They said the Ranganath Mishra Commission had provided enough “authoritative empirical data”.
“There is absolutely no reason to wait. The new Commission will take two years. Can this court go on to wait for years and years, decades together?” Mr. Bhushan had asked.
