New Delhi, July 18 (UNI) The Supreme Court on Monday asked counsel to bring on re- cord some concrete examples of Hindus being denied minority status at the state level. The top court was hearing a plea challenging a provision of the National Commission for Minorities (NCM) Act and seeking a direction to the Centre to define “minority” and lay down guidelines for the identification of minorities at the district level.
Senior advocate Arvind Da- tar, representing Devkinan- dan Thakur, submitted before a bench headed by Justice U.U. Lalit that a 1993 notifi- cation says six communities Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, Parsi, and Jain — are minorities at the national level, and court judgments say minorities have to be no- tified by states. Noting that a Christian institution claiming minority status in Mizoram will be a reversal of the situation, the bench asked Datar: “Are you denied the status in any state?”As Datar said that he is talking about Hindus being denied minority status and there is a general perception that Hindus cannot be a minority, the bench replied that only if there is a concrete case that Hindus are denied minority status, for example in Mizoram or Kashmir, then the court can look into this. Justice Lalit said.
