The Supreme Court on Friday gave another last opportunity to states to submit their responses to its notice in a plea seeking identification of minorities at the district level. A bench of Justice Sanjiv Khanna and Justice Dipankar Datta conveyed its displeasure at some of the states failing to file their response despite reminders. Giving them six more weeks to comply with its directions, the court said it will impose a fine of Rs 10,000 each on defaulters. Adjourning the hearing until April, the bench also asked the Centre to file a fresh status report. In April last year, too, the SC had given states and UTs which were yet to file their response a last opportunity to do so. Among others, the petitioners have sought a direction to the Centre to define the term minority. They pointed out that though the Constitution refers to “minorities” in some Articles, it does not define the term. Neither does the National Minorities Commission Act, 1992, under which the Centre notifies which communities are minorities. Citing this, the petitions have also challenged Section 2(c) of the National Commission for Minorities Act, 1992, which gives the Centre power to notify minorities asking how the Centre can do so without a clear definition of what constitutes a minority. One of the petitioners has prayed for identification of minorities at the district level. In the TMA Pai Foundation case, the SC laid down that for the purposes of Article 30, which deals with the rights of minorities to establish and administer educational institutions, religious and linguistic minorities will have to be identified at the state level. The petitioners said that because of this, given the TMA Pai judgment, the October 23, 1993, notification by which the Centre had notified Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists and Parsis, as “minority” community, is as good as invalid. In an affidavit filed on May 9, 2022, “in supersession of the earlier affidavit”, the Centre said “the power is vested with the Centre to notify minorities”. It then sought time from the SC to hold consultations with “state governments and other stakeholders” saying the issue has “far-reaching ramifications”. In an affidavit filed in January this year, it said 24 states and six UTs had furnished their views and sought more time for the discussions.
