By Syed Ali Mujtaba
The three-member commission headed by former Chief Justice of India Justice K.G. Balakrishnan has been granted a one-year extension to finalize its report, on whether Scheduled Caste (SC) status would be given to the Muslims and Christian converts.
The report of Justice Ranganath Mishra Commission in 2007 recommended that SC status should be given to the Dalits belonging to the Muslim and Christian converts. The government called Justice Ranganath Mishra Commission’s report “flawed.”
By the Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order, 1950, the right to reservations in jobs and education is given only to people from Hindu, Sikh, and Buddhist faiths belonging to the SC community.
A clutch of petitions seeking to repel the 1950 order is lying before the Supreme Court. These petitions seek the benefit of reservation being extended to Dalits who have converted to Christianity or Islam. This case has been pending for two decades now. The apex court has said that the day had come to take a call on issues with social ramifications.
The government informed the Supreme Court that it had formed a three-member panel headed by former CJI KG Balakrishnan to examine whether SC status can be granted to Dalit Muslims and Christians.
The Justice K.G. Balakrishnan commission panel is mandated to explore inclusion of the Dalit converts from other religions. The commission has faced delays in initiating field visits, a critical part of its work. The commission is also gathering insights from different States and Union Territories regarding the socio-economic conditions of Dalit converts. These reasons besides others made the Supreme Court grant a year extension to the Balakrishnan Commission panel.
Opposing reservation to the Muslim and Dalit converts, the Union government told the Supreme Court that Scheduled Caste (SC) status was not granted to the Dalits who have converted to Islam or Christianity because social stigma such as untouchability is not prevalent in these two religions.
The Centre also argued against the inclusion of Dalit Christians and Muslims in the SC list, citing the foreign origin of these religions.
It called Justice Ranganath Mishra Commission report flawed because it was not prepared without conducting any field studies and failed to consider the effect that the inclusion would have on the present castes listed as SCs.
The Centre further said, if all the converts are arbitrarily given the perks of reservation without examining the aspect of social disability it would cause a grave injustice and would be an abuse of the process of law, consequently affecting the rights of the SC groups.
M. H. Jawahirullah, MLA from Papanasam Constituency in Tamil Nadu debunked the government’s argument against reservation to the SC converts to Islam and Christianity saying “Changing your religion does not change your social status. A person’s caste remains unchanged even after converting to a different religion. A Dalit remains a Dalit even if he converts to Islam or Christianity.”