Karnataka seeks to maintain status quo on declaring a community as minority, SC told

The Karnataka government has sought to maintain status quo with regard to declaring a particular community as minority in the state.

The BJP government at the state declared its stand during the exercise being undertaken by the Centre to seek inputs from various stakeholders, including all states and Union Territories in pending PILs before the Supreme Court.

In its response to the Union government, the state government said, "In exercise of the powers conferred in section 10(b) of the Karnataka State Minorities Act, 1994, Karnataka State Minorities Commission has recommended the Government of Karnataka to declare Muslims, Christian, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains and Zoroastrarians (Parsees) as minority communities".

Accordingly, Social Welfare Secretariat of Govt of Karnataka declared those communities as Minority Communities under Section 2(d) of the said Act. The stand of the State of Karnataka is "Status Quo", it said.

The pleas, including by advocate Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay before the top court, sought a direction to declare minority at the district or state level, instead of at the national level.

Of the 24 states and Union territories (UTs) which gave their opinions to the Union government, Delhi was the only government that openly backed granting minority status to Hindus in any form at the state or UT level. Delhi said, "The central government may declare the 'migrated minority status to the followers of Hinduism who are the religious minority in their origin state (i.e. Jammu and Kashmir, Laddakh etc) and residing in Delhi after migration from their home state."

Some other states — including Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Tamil Nadu, Punjab, West Bengal and Uttarakhand — favoured identification of a “minority community” at the state level but didn’t name any particular faith or group. In all these states, except Punjab, Hindus are the religious majority community at the state level. In Punjab, Sikhs comprised the majority.

Different BJP-ruled states took different stand with regard to declaring minorities as per the population of the State.

Gujarat said it is "comfortable with present procedure of identifying minorities communities". Goa did not take any stand in the matter. Himachal Pradesh said although the Constitution does not define a minority or provide details relating to the geographical and numerical specification of the concept, it is felt that the Constitutional scheme envisages this to be determined at national level.

Haryana said the power to notify any community as a minority community is vested with the central government. Madhya Pradesh gave approval for continuation of present system for identification of minority.

Maharashtra felt in the interest of Uniformity, central government can notify the minority communities. Tripura said minorities should be identified at State level so that the followers of a religious group who are actually less in number can get their constitutional rights as envisaged under Article 30 of the Constitution. Uttar Pradesh said
that it will have no objection if any decision taken by the central government in the matter.