PIL Filed in SC Challenging Provisions of NCM Act & Notification Passed by Centre in 1993

Paridhi Arya

Published on June 5, 2022 at 17:15 IST

The Public Interest Litigation was filed by Devkinandan Thakur challenged the notification passed by the Union government on October 23, 1993 and Section 2(c) of the National Commission for Minorities Act, 1992.

This notification declared that Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, Parsis and Jains as minorities at national level. This was challenged to be against Article 14, 15, 21, 29 and 30 of Constitution of India.

This notification was passed by Union government by using the power to notify minorities given under section 2(c) of the National Commission of Minorities Act, 1992 (NCM). This section is challenged to be unconstitutional as it gives arbitrary power to Union Government.

The petitioner seeks to pass directions to Union government in regard to identification of minorities should be district wise so that benefit of Article 29 and 30 can be availed by those who are literally in minority in the specified area.

Petitioner states in the PIL that different places have different ratio of religious classification such as in Kashmir 90% people are Muslims and 8.74% are Hindus, in Ladakh 46% are Buddhists and 2.75 % are Hindus, such examples are many.

These examples show there are some areas where Hindus are in less number than Muslims but Muslims are counted as minority across the nation. Hence being huge in number other religions can take the benefit of Article 29 and 30 of the Constitution of India but not Hindus who are less in numbers.

The Apex Court in the Judgment of TMA Pai [(2002) 8 SCC 481] made it clear that for determining linguistic and religious minorities state will be considered as a unit.

The Petitioner prayed for two things first Union government should be directed to define the term minority and second is to pass guidelines for identification of minorities at district level.

There is one PIL filed by Aswhini Upadhyay in Supreme Court. This Petition challenged the NCM Act and National Commission of Minority Educational Institutions Act asking to give minority status to Hindus in some states and UTs.

The Centre filed affidavit in this petition stating that state has power to notify minorities but then Centre filed new affidavit stated this stand is needed to be taken after consulting the State Government and other stake holders to avoid problems regarding the same.

The Court expressed grief that government is changing its stand and asked to file the report of this consultative process with state government within 3 months.

Related Post