Muslims still minority in state,rules Allahabad High Court

The Allahabad High Court on Friday quashed its April 2007 judgment delivered by a single judge Bench of Justice SN Srivastava who had held that Muslims in Uttar Pradesh were not a religious minority.

Written by Vijay Pratap Singh

Allahabad | July 25, 2009 05:39 AM IST

2 min read

The Allahabad High Court on Friday quashed its April 2007 judgment delivered by a single judge Bench of Justice SN Srivastava who had held that Muslims in Uttar Pradesh were not a religious minority.

A Division Bench of Justices SR Alam and Sudhir Agrawal held that Muslims were declared a minority community by a notification dated October 23,1993 and nobody can challenge either the validity of the National Minorities Commission Act,1992 or the said notification issued under Section 2(c) of the Act.

The Bench,while allowing the special appeal filed by the state government against the 2007 order,observed that it was not open for the single judge to direct the Centre to modify the 1993 notification.

The Minority Commission has been set up with a statutory status…it could also aid and advise the government regarding the identification of any community as minority. Though the ultimate power in this regard shall vest with the Central government under Section 2(c) of the Act,it is always open for the commission to consider this aspect, said the Bench.

The court observed that the status of Muslims as a religious minority ought not to have been examined by the Judge in the way it was done.

In his judgment,Justice Srivastava had ruled that Muslims in Uttar Pradesh could no longer be treated as a religious minority because they comprised about 18.5 per cent of the population in the state.

The order,which had come two days before the Assembly elections in UP in 2007, directed the state government to treat Muslims at par with the non-minority communities without any discrimination.

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The judgment was delivered on a writ petition filed by the manager of a madarasa in Ghazipur,challenging the out of turn grant-in-aid to certain other minority institutions.

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Muslims still minority in state,rules Allahabad High Court

The Allahabad High Court on Friday quashed its April 2007 judgment delivered by a single judge Bench of Justice SN Srivastava  who had held that Muslims in Uttar Pradesh were not a religious minority.

The Allahabad High Court on Friday quashed its April 2007 judgment delivered by a single judge Bench of Justice SN Srivastava who had held that Muslims in Uttar Pradesh were not a religious minority.