Give examples of minorities being unrecognised; district-wise recognition untenable: Supreme Court

The Supreme Court on Monday asked a petitioner challenging the present classification of minorities on the basis of religion, to place on record concrete examples of States where any minority is not recognised. [Devkinandan Thakur Ji v Union of India & Ors.].A Bench of Justices UU Lalit and S Ravindra Bhat wondered if the top court can interfere in such a matter given the precedents already establishing that minority recognition has to be at the State level. While Justice Lalit told Advocate Ashwini Upadhyay, appearing in a connected matter, that he may be right theoretically, Justice Bhat weighed in saying,"You want to make out a case where there's none...They can't be identified on a general basis. Some are all-India minorities like Jews and Konkanis.".Noticing a specific prayer in Upadhyay's plea for district-wise recognition of minorities, Justice Bhat said,"Prayer c (minorities at district level) is not tenable in law."Upadhyay urged that it can be on a State-level, referring to Hindus being a minority in some States..The plea filed by advocate Ashutosh Dubey challenged a 1993 notification of the Central government declaring Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, Parsis and Jains as minorities at the national level. The petitioners sought identification of minorities at the district level, and challenged the constitutionality of a proviso to the National Commission for Minorities Act enabling the 1993 notification. The petition argued that denial of minority rights to 'real minorities', referring to the Hindu community in India that may be a minority in several States, is arbitrary and unreasonable. The same infringes on the fundamental right to equality, prohibition of discrimination, and erodes the State's endeavour to reduce inequalities, it was contended. Further, it is argued that the framers of the Constitution never intended to establish minority commissions and ministries. The classification of minorities merely on a religious basis fails the test of rationality and is not based on any intelligible differential, the petitioners contended. .In response to the plea by BJP leader and advocate Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay, the Central government in March told the Supreme Court that Hindus, Jews, and Bahai followers who are minorities in certain States can be so declared by the concerned state government.Since Parliament has the competence to enact law such as the National Commission for Minorities Act, the natural corollary is that executive competence to notify a community as 'minority' under the said Act is also vested in the Central government, it was submitted in an affidavit.The affidavit also said that any declaration as minority does not automatically guarantee all minority community members benefits from the schemes of the government.Hence, the National Commission for Minorities Act is not arbitrary and Section 2(f) of the Act does not given any unbridled powers to the Central government, the Centre had submitted. Further, the power of State governments to enact legislation for the protection and promotion of the interests of minorities is derived from the Concurrent List, and not the State List..At a previous hearing, the top court had stated that the right to be recognised as a minority is an inherent one that does not need a statute to be exercised.The Court had further remarked that unless there was a concrete case of an eligible group being denied minority status, it could not entertain litigation in this regard."Supreme Court says that it should be state-based. It is an inherent right, can be done without a statute also. See linguistic minorities. Kannada speaking person in Maharashtra is [a] minority.".[Follow our coverage of the last hearing]