On November 29, the Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind (JUH) moved the Supreme Court seeking a direction to the Centre to give SC status to Muslims who have converted from SC Hindus.
The JUH has filed an intervention application in a plea seeking the inclusion of those Hindus who converted to Christianity and Islam in the list of Scheduled Caste and challenging Paragraph 3 of the Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Orders, 1950, which provides SC status only to those professing Hinduism, Sikhism, and Buddhism.
It is violative of Article 14 of the Constitution and discriminatory to regard Dalits from Hindu, Sikh, and Buddhist communities as SC but deny the same on religious grounds to Muslims, the Jamiat said in the application.
The denial of Scheduled Caste status to Muslim converts deprives them of political, educational, and other benefits given to non-Muslim and non-Christian SC persons is a calculated historical wrong to restrain free profession, practice, and propagation of religion, the application further said.
The gap between Muslims and other socio-religious categories has increased and unemployment among Muslim graduates is highest among socio-religious groups, Jamiat said while quoting the Sachar Committee report.
Earlier, in October, the Union government formed a three-member Commission of Inquiry headed by former Chief Justice of India, Justice K.G. Balakrishnan, to consider continuing the SC status of people converting to other religions.
