The Supreme Court has taken on board a plea to stop using religious identity as a criterion to afford or deny communities a place within the Scheduled Caste bracket.
A Bench headed by Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul, on July 3, ordered the petition filed by Kudanthai Arasan, the president of a Kumbakonam-based political movement named the Viduthalai Tamil Puligal Katchi, to be tagged along with the pending petition seeking Scheduled Caste reservations for Dalit converts to Christianity and Islam.
Mr. Arasan, represented by advocates Franklin Caesar Thomas and Chand Qureshi, has specifically challenged the Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order 1950 issued under Article 341(1) of the Constitution. Paragraph 3 of the 1950 Order, post amendments in 1956 and 1990, mandates that anybody who is not a Hindu, Sikh or Buddhist cannot be granted Scheduled Caste status.
‘Religion’ not in parent provision
The petition contended that the 1950 Order exceeds the ambit of its parent provision, Article 341(1), which does not expressly exclude any religious community from the privileges of reservation in jobs and admissions.
“Since the word ‘religion’ does not even exist in Article 341(1), the ban concerning Christians and Muslims in Paragraph 3 of the 1950 Order should be deleted. Religion should not be a criterion for giving or denying Scheduled Caste status to any community,” Mr. Thomas argued.
The petition contended that the denial of Scheduled Caste status to Dalit converts to Christianity and Islam was sourced from the belief that both these faiths were “historically foreign religions and do not recognise caste system as in Hinduism”.
‘Unconstitutional’
“Impoverished people are deprived of Scheduled Caste privileges because of this religious ban on Christians and Muslims of Scheduled Caste origin and converts… The ban concerning Christians and Muslims is unconstitutional and violative of the rights to equality, non-discrimination and religious freedom,” it said.
The government has argued in court that Dalits who converted to Christianity or Islam to overcome the burdens of caste cannot claim reservation benefits enjoyed by those who chose to stay back in the Hindu religious system.
The Centre had rejected the 2007 report of the Justice Ranganath Mishra Commission for Religious and Linguistic Minorities, which recommended that Scheduled Caste reservation be provided for Dalit converts to Christianity and Islam. Instead, it constituted a new Commission last year, headed by former Chief Justice of India K.G. Balakrishnan, to study and prepare a report on the question of granting Scheduled Caste status to “new persons who have historically belonged to the Scheduled Castes but have converted to religions other than Hinduism, Buddhism and Sikhism”.
