In six states, the Centre has a 'final chance' to reply to a petition to declare Hindus a minority.

The highest court granted the petitioner’s request and transferred similar petitions against the National Commission for Minorities Act to it from the high courts of Gauhati, Meghalaya, and Delhi.

On Friday, the Supreme Court granted the Union government “one last chance” to answer to a public interest petition demanding that minorities be recognised by state and Hindus declared a minority in six states and two Union territories.

Hearing the petition, which relied on the Supreme Court’s 2002 TMA Pai decision that religious and linguistic minorities must be considered statewide under Article 30, a bench of Justices S K Kaul and M M Sundresh gave the Centre four weeks after Solicitor General Tushar Mehta requested more time to file an affidavit. The court also gave the parties two weeks to file a rebuttal, and the case will be heard in seven weeks.

Article 30 addresses minorities’ rights to create and operate educational institutions.

The petitioner, Ashwini Upadhyay, challenged the constitutional validity of Section 2 of the National Commission for Minorities Act, 1992, which designated only Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, and Zoroastrians as minorities, claiming that this deprived Hindus, Baha’is, and Jews of “legitimate rights.”

According to the appeal, Hindus constitute a minority in six states: Mizoram (2.75%), Nagaland (8.75%), Meghalaya (11.53%), Arunachal Pradesh (29%), Manipur (31.39%), Punjab (38.40%), and the Union territories of Jammu & Kashmir (28.44%) and Lakshadweep (28.44%). (2.5 per cent).

“In Ladakh, Mizoram, Lakshadweep, Kashmir, Nagaland, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh, Punjab, and Manipur, Hindus are the true minorities. However, their minority rights are being snatched away from them illegitimately and arbitrarily because neither the federal government nor the states have designated them as minorities “Hindus are being denied their fundamental rights and protections granted by Article 29-30,” the petitioner, who was represented by senior Advocate C S Vaidyanathan, stated.

The Supreme Court agreed to transfer identical petitions against the National Commission for Minorities Act from the high courts of Gauhati, Meghalaya, and Delhi to itself, based on the petitioner’s request.

Despite being the majority in Mizoram, Meghalaya, and Nagaland, and having significant populations in Arunachal Pradesh, Goa, Kerala, Manipur, Tamil Nadu, and West Bengal, Christians are nevertheless deemed a minority, according to the petitioner. Similarly, despite being the majority in Punjab and making up a large portion of the populations of Delhi, Chandigarh, and Haryana, Sikhs are recognised as a minority community. Muslims are designated a minority community in Lakshadweep and Jammu and Kashmir, as well as Assam, West Bengal, Kerala, Uttar Pradesh, and Bihar, where they constitute the majority.