SC gives Centre 4 weeks to respond to plea

NEWDELHI: The Supreme Court on Monday sought the Centre’s response to a plea challenging the National Commission for Minorities (NCM)’s constitutional validity. It gave four weeks to the Centre to respond and listed the matter for hearing next in March.

In their plea, six petitioners claiming to be Sanatan Vedic Dharam followers have sought the scrapping of the National Commission for Minorities Act that governs the panel and to restrain the Centre from implementing and spending government funds on 14 schemes for the minorities. Attorney general K K Venugopal told the court that the issue involves constitutional questions and that a five-judge constitution bench should hear it.

The petitioners have alleged the Hindu community was being discriminated against on the grounds of religion as a number of government schemes favour certain religious minority communities . The petitioners have pleaded that citizens cannot be forced to pay taxes for the promotion of religious minorities as it violates the right to equality under the Constitution’s Article 14, the prohibition against discrimination under Article 15 and freedom against payment of taxes for promotion of any particular religion under Article 27.

The NCM was set up in 1992 and Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, and Zoroastrians

have been notified as minority communities.

“Our bone of contention is that religious minority cannot be treated to be a class and, therefore, money spent in their favour would be violative of Articles 14, 15 and 27. The petition raises pertinent issues which will have a significant bearing on the interpretation of minority rights”, advocate for the petitioners, Vishnu Shankar Jain told HT.