Supreme Court junks PIL to declare Hindus as minorities

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday declined to entertain a public interest litigation (PIL) seeking declaration of Hindus as minorities in eight states of the country as per population figures of the central government.

A bench of justices Ranjan Gogoi and Deepak Gupta, after hearing senior counsel Arvind P. Datar, allowed the petitioner – advocate Ashwini Kumar Upadhyaya, BJP spokesperson, to withdraw the petition with liberty to approach the national minorities’ commission for relief.

Earlier, Datar submitted that the national minorities’ commission could not look into the issue as it pertained to eight states and representation with the commission was already pending.

He submitted that the Centre, through a notification dated November 23, 1993, notified five communities i.e. Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists and Parsis as “minority” communities. In 2014, Jains were added to the list but not Hindus, although they formed a minority in eight states of India.

The petitioner said that according to the 2011 Census, Hindus formed a minority in eight states i.e. Lakshadweep (2.5 per cent), Mizoram (2.75 per cent), Nagaland (8.75 per cent), Meghalaya (11.53 per cent), J&K (28.44 per cent), Arunachal Pradesh (29 per cent), Manipur (31.39 per cent), and Punjab (38.40 per cent).

However, their minority rights were being siphoned off illegally and arbitrarily to the majority population because neither the central nor state governments had notified Hindus as a “minority”.

Hence, Hindus were being deprived of their basic rights, guaranteed under articles 25 to 30 of the Constitution.

Mr Upadhyaya pointed out in his petition that Muslims formed a majority in Lakshadweep (96.20 per cent) and J & K (68.30 per cent), and were present in significant numbers in Assam (34.20 per cent), West Bengal (27.5 per cent), Kerala (26.60 per cent), Uttar Pradesh (19.30 per cent), and Bihar (18 per cent).