The Supreme Court on Tuesday issued notice to the Centre on a plea to transfer pending cases, related to the definition of minorities, from several high courts to the top court.
The pending matters challenged the Centre’s notification to declare five communities — Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists and Parsees — as minorities.
A bench headed by Chief Justice S A Bobde and comprising Justices A S Bopanna and V Ramasubramanian issued notices to Ministry of Minority Affairs, Ministry of Law and Justice and Ministry of Home Affairs, on the petition filed by BJP leader and advocate Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay.
Senior advocate C S Vaidyanathan appeared for Upadhyay.
He sought transfer of all cases from high courts to the top court in order to decide the issue.
The high courts at Delhi, Meghalaya and Guwahati are already seized of the petitions challenging the constitutional validity of section 2(c) of the National Commission for Minorities Act, 1992.
In October 1993, the notification was issued under this Act, which declared the five communities as minorities across the country. The transfer plea filed by advocate Ashwini Upadhyay argued as a result of this notification, majority population of Sikhs in Punjab and Muslims in Jammu and Kashmir have received benefits, which were originally meant for minorities
Published 09 February 2021, 13:57 IST
