New Delhi: Setting aside the Union government’s plea to wait for the report of yet another committee appointed by it to recommend whether Dalit Christians and Muslims should be included in the Scheduled Caste (SC) quota, the Supreme Court has decided to go ahead with the hearing.Stating that the matter has been pending for almost 20 years, the three-member bench of the apex court observed, “Social stigma and religious stigma are different things. Social stigma may continue even after conversion. We cannot shut our eyes when we are considering all these constitutional matters.” “The court said it would conclude the hearing in a time-bound manner and asked the parties to file their brief written submission and make a common compilation for smooth hearing in the case in which both sides would get two days each to conclude the arguments,” said a Time of India report.The report said that appearing on behalf of the Union government, additional solicitor general K.M. Nataraj told the bench comprising Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul, Ahsanuddin Amanullah and Aravind Kumar that the court must wait for the report of the newest panel formed by the government in October 2022 and led by former Chief Justice of India K.G. Balakrishnan. The earlier report prepared by the Justice Ranganath Misra Commission was rejected by the government. The Misra Commission had recommended granting SC status to Dalit Muslims and Christians. Natraj alleged that the Misra Commission report was not based on field study and consultations and the court should wait for empirical data collected by the new commission. To this, the bench said, “Tomorrow there will be a different political dispensation which may say that new report is not acceptable. How many committees would be appointed?”Asking the ASG to check the Misra Commission report, the bench said, “You are making too generalised a statement on a report. The report is not that perfunctory”. The court said it would take a call on whether it could rely on the empirical data from the new report.Appearing on behalf of the petitioners, senior advocates Prashant Bhushan, Colin Gonsalves, Raju Ramachandran and C.D. Singh submitted that the matter be adjudicated by the apex court as “there is enough material on the issue which showed that Dalit Muslims and Christians are treated as ‘untouchables’ and discriminated against and are at the bottom of the social hierarchy.”As per the Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order of 1950, no person belonging to a religion other than Hinduism, Sikhism or Buddhism can be deemed SC. However, Dalits belonging to Christianity and Islam have demanded that they be included in the SC community as change in their religion didn’t change their social exclusion on the basis of caste hierarchy. In an earlier submission, the Union government had banked on the 1950 order and told the court that as there exists no social hierarchy, and that Dalits who had converted to Islam and Christianity cannot be given SC status. The bench has posted the matter for further hearing on July 11.
