Church Survey Intended For Welfare Of Minorities : Karnataka Govt Tells High Court

The reply is filed in response to a petition filed by People's Union For Civil Liberties challenging the communication issued by the State government dated July 7 and July 9.

A preliminary objection is raised to the maintainability of the petition by stating that the petition is misconceived and not maintainable as the petitioners have not disclosed their legal entity before the court nor they have placed any material before the court to substantiate their aims and objectives, and thus the mandatory requirement of the High Court of Karnataka (Public Interest Litigation) Rules 2018 is not complied.

Further the reply goes on to state that the Directorate of Minorities is entrusted with the job of taking care of welfare and well being of the minorities in the state of Karnataka. It is said that, "The duties and obligations of Directorate of Minorities includes community welfare of minorities, development of residential and non-essential schools, hostels of minorities construction of community halls for minorities, church renovations, repair works of gurudwaras, repair works of Jain basathis and samudaya bhavans, financial assistance to orphanages belonging to minorities, cemetery development and such other major welfare schemes and programmes. A separate fund is allocated in the annual budget of the state."

It adds, "Under these circumstances, it is required and expected of the Directorate of Minorities to have relevant information pertaining to minorities without which fund allocation and implementation of schemes as per budget allocation is not possible."

Further it says, "Unless the Directorate of Minorities is having relevant and complete information and factual data it is not possible for them to provide any kind of information to Finance department (State) for budgetary purposes. The communication at annexure A is a step towards collection of data for accomplishing the objections of the Directorate."

The reply also gives details of the scheme implemented by the Directorate of Minorities called as 'Christian Development programs', which was introduced in 2012. It states that, "In order to extend the benefits of the aforesaid scheme, the 2nd respondent (Department of Minorities) issued the communication letter dated July 7 to all district officers calling upon them to update their existing churches and their particulars so as to implement schemes/serve them to achieve the set goals and also extend services to a satisfactory level".

It is also added that, "The relief sought in the writ petition is in the nature of the very existence of the Directorate of Minorities, which is totally baseless and unfounded."

The reply also states that a total of 1923 christian institutions have so far been granted approximately Rs 412 crores under the Christian Development programme, since the year 2011.

Data Protection:

The petition says that the letter does not specify or mention the details of the concerned authority responsible for information collection, collating and processing, overseeing the use of such information and protecting the data put together by the respondents. "The vagueness of the impugned letter has escalated the level of anxiety amongst the Christian community as they are being targeted and subjected to threats, abused and harassed by fundamentalist forces," the petition says.

In response, the state government has said that, "The data collected by respondent 2(Directorate of Minorities), will not be divulged to anybody keeping in mind the privacy policy and also safety and security aspects of the minority institutions. Thus the apprehension of the petitioner regarding misuse of the data is false and baseless."

It adds, "The Directorate of Minorities is always protecting the interest of minorities, so also their constitutional rights as enshrined in the Constitution in the true form and spirit and as such there is no violation of Articles 25, 26 of the Constitution of India."

On October 25, the High Court issued notice to the respondent and directed them to file the statement of objections. It hadrefused to grant interim order sought for staying the operation of the impugned letters and directing the respondents not to take any coercive action pursuant to or under the impugned communications. The bench had said, "There is nothing on record to show such an urgency that an interim order is to be passed at this stage."

The petition states that the impugned communication seeking to collect information about the churches is illegal, discriminatory, void, arbitrary, unconstitutional and liable to be quashed as being violative of the right of equality and privacy under Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution.

The communication does not have any legislative backing and are not authorized by any legislation, order, bye-law, rule regulation or notification and therefore are liable to be quashed as unconstitutional. Further, it is said the impugned communications are an affront to the secular fabric of our nation and are in gross violation of the basic feature of secularism embedded in the ethos of our constitution.

The plea prays for directions to declare that communication dated July 7 and July 9 as illegal, void and unconstitutional. It also seeks directions to the respondents to formulate fair and equitable mechanisms and systems to protect the interest of minorities.

Case Title: People Union For Civil Liberties And State Of Karnataka

Case No: WP 18661/2021.