In the backdrop of the turmoil prevailing in the country for over a month now, a PIL challenging the allocation of special funds for various minority welfare schemes by the central government was admitted for hearing in the Supreme Court Monday last.
One of the main arguments against the Centre allocating Rs 4,700 crores in the last Union Budget was that it discriminated against the majority community. That the Attorney General K K Venugopal submitted in the court that the PIL ‘raised substantial questions of law' and questioned the basis on which the National Commission for Minority was established in 1992, it ought to be referred to a five-member constitutional bench. The court set up a three-judge bench which after hearing arguments would decide whether it needed to go to a five-member constitutional bench.
Five petitioners argued that the special grants and favours to members of the minority community and concessions given to Waqf boards and Waqf properties discriminated against members of the Hindu community and their institutions like mutts, trusts and akharas. This militated against the principle of secularism and was also in violation of the fundamental right to equality. The PIL listed 14 welfare schemes which were specially tailored for the Muslims. It was the petitioners' case that the State cannot make a separate law for the minorities beyond the limited scope of Article 30 of the Constitution. Article 30 allows religious and linguistic minorities to establish and run their educational institutions without outside interference. Although it is hard to speculate on the outcome of the PIL, its significance cannot be lost if seen in the context of the on-going hullaballoo, especially by the Muslim community, against the Citizenship Amendment Act which seeks to provide six minority groups from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh fast-track citizenship. If the CAA is anti-Preamble, as its critics insist, because it relies on a religious differentiation to offer citizenship to the persecuted people from these three countries, how can the Indian Government be right in using the same religious differentiation between one Indian against another to offer special benefits to one and deny the same to the other?
If Muslims as the largest minority in the country get special allocation of funds and other benefits for waqf boards and waqf properties, by what logic can the persecuted minorities from the three specific countries be denied special treatment in consideration of their citizenship applications? Or is it the case of CAA critics that positive discrimination in favour of domestic minorities (to the exclusion of majority community) sits well with the provisions of the Preamble but it militates against the same provisions if the majority community in the three neighbouring countries is excluded from the ambit of CAA? One can understand the opposition to CAA by those living in the three countries feeling left out from its ambit, but loud chest-beating by those who do not in any way stand to lose anything shows an extraneous agenda. It is highly malicious to misuse the name of Gandhi and Ambedkar to justify a protest which has a wholly partisan political agenda.
Meanwhile, the Union Home Minister Amit Shah yet again ruled out any change in CAA, saying it would be implemented in its present form. Shah made these remarks at a pro-CAA rally in Lucknow on Tuesday. He reiterated for the nth time that the law was not anti-Muslim and that it was a false propaganda by the Opposition parties that it would eventually lead to the ejection of Muslims from the country. On Tuesday too a Minister of State for Home clarified that the census-survey for the National Population Register next year would be on the same lines as the first NPR was in 2010 when the UPA was in power. No additional questions would be asked other than those asked at the time of the 2010 NPR survey. However, it is unlikely the ministerial clarification would persuade those determined to ascribe a sinister motive to the CAA and to the yet-to-born NPR.
