The Central Government has informed the Supreme Court that a state Government can consider granting Hindus the minority status if they are not in the majority within that particular state and enable them to establish and administer educational institutions. Also, they should be given all the rights guaranteed to minorities by the Constitution.
The Centre gave this information in response to a PIL filed by advocate Ashwini Upadhyay.
Centre said that since the subject of identification of minority communities is in the concurrent list of the Constitution, both the Centre and the state have the power to give minority status to any specific religious or linguistic communities.
The petitioner said that the followers of Hinduism, Bahaism and Judaism are minorities in Mizoram, Nagaland, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh, Lakshadweep, Manipur, J&K and Punjab.
Still, the majority of communities in these states are treated as minorities due to their national population percentage. Therefore, they take all the benefits given to the minorities.
The Centre has declared Christians, Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains and Parsis as minorities in the country. However, it said that the states also had the power to declare a community as a linguistic or religious minority.
The Centre said it was for the concerned state legislature to consider whether these religious groups and communities could be declared minorities to allow them to establish and administer educational institutions of their choice in those states.
The Karnataka Government has notified Hindi, Gujarati, Urdu, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Tulu and Konkani languages as minority languages within the state. Meanwhile, the Maharashtra Government has notified Jews as a minority community within the state.
Centre said states could also certify institutions established by smaller linguistic or religious communities within their territorial jurisdictions as minority institutions.
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