From Our Bureau
NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Tuesday snubbed the Centre for not taking a clear stand on a plea by BJP leader advocate Ashwini Upadhyay to consider the Hindus as a minority in certain states.
The Minority Affairs Ministry has told the court that the power to notify the minorities is vested with the Centre and any decision is taken only after discussions with the state governments and other stake holders.
In an affidavit it said: “The question involved in the writ petition has far-reaching ramifications throughout the country and so any staken taken without detailed deliberations with the stakeholders may resultin unintended complications.”
The affidavit was filed on a plea seeking directions for framing of guidelines for the identification of minorities at the state level, contending that Hindus are in minority in 10 states.
The Ministry of Minority Affairs has taken a different stand than one taken in March that certain states, where Hindus or other communities are less in number, can declare them a minority community within their own territories, to enable them to set up and administer their own institutions.
A Bench of Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and M M Sundresh deprecated that the Centre is ambiguous on what it wants to do. “Solution cannot be complex. If you want to consult then consult (state governments), Justice Kaul told the counsel representing the Centre. The counsel sought pass-over of the matter since Solicitor General Tushar Mehta was busy with some other matter.
Senior advocate C S Vaidyanathan, representing the petition, pointed out that the Centre’s new affidavit is in supersession of its earlier affidavit to hold wider consultations with the states and other stakeholders.
The court agreed to take up the matter later, stating “let the solicitor general come.” Justice Kaul said: “There are matters, which require resolution….Taking different stands does not help.”
Putting the onus on states, the Central government in an affidavit had stated in March that state governments too have the power to declare communities as a minority.
The affidavit filed in the top court by the Minority Affairs Ministry had said, “state governments can also declare a religious or linguistic community as a ‘minority community’ within the state.”
States can also declare a religious or linguistic group as a minority community within its territory, as Maharashtra did in the case of Jews in 2016, Karnataka notified Urdu, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, Marathi, Tulu, Lamani, Hindi, Konkani, and Gujrati languages as minority languages over there, it had said.
