CONTEXT

Supreme Court is taking up a petition seeking identification of minorities at the state level and granting minority status to Hindus in states and union territories where their numbers have gone below other communities.

What is the definition of minority under Indian laws?

The expression “minorities” appears in some Articles of the Constitution, but is not defined anywhere.

What does the Constitution say about minorities?

• Article 29 deals with the
  • Protection of interests of minorities
  • any section of the citizens with a distinct language, script or culture of its own shall have the right to conserve the same
  • no citizen shall be denied admission into any educational institution maintained by the State or receiving aid out of State funds on grounds only of religion, race, caste, language or any of them
• Article 30 deals with the “right of minorities to establish and administer educational institutions”.
• Article 350(A) says there shall be a Special Officer for linguistic minorities to be appointed by the President

Who is a minority in India?

Currently, only those communities notified under section 2(c) of the National Minorities Commission Act, 1992, by the central government are regarded as minority

Which are the minorities notified by the Government of India?

In the exercise of its powers under the Section 2(c) of the NCM Act, the Centre on October 23, 1993, notified five groups — Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists and Parsis — as ‘minority’ communities. Jains were added to the list in January 2014

What have courts said on the subject?

TMA PAI CASE

• In ‘TMA Pai’, an 11-judge bench of the Supreme Court dealt with the question of the scope of right of minorities to establish and administer educational institutions of their choice under the Constitution.
• A majority ruling by six judges in 2002 referred to two other cases pertaining to the DAV College in Punjab, in which the SC had to consider whether Hindus were a religious minority in the State of Punjab