States too can declare religious or linguistic community as minority: Centre to SC

State governments can declare a religious or linguistic community as a minority within the said state, the Centre has told the Supreme Court.

The submission was made in response to a plea filed by advocate Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay which challenged the validity of section 2(f) of the National Commission for Minority Education Institution Act, 2004. Upadhyay, in his plea, challenged the validity of section 2(f) alleging that it gives unbridled power to the Centre terming it “manifestly arbitrary, irrational, and offending”.

The Ministry of Minority Affairs in its response said: “It is submitted that the State governments can also declare a religious or linguistic community as a minority community within the said state.” “For instance, the Maharashtra government has notified ‘Jews’ as a minority community within the state. Moreover, the Karnataka government has notified Urdu, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, Marathi, Tulu, Lamani, Hindi, Konkani and Gujarati languages as minority languages within the state of Karnataka,” it said.