SC Status For Converted Dalits : Not Accepting Ranganath Mishra Commission Report, Centre Tells Supreme Court

A three-member Commission has been appointed in October, 2022 to examine the issue, whether Scheduled Caste status can be granted to Dalits who have converted to religions other than Sikhism and Buddhism. At present, as per the Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order, 1950 only those who are Hindu, Sikh and Buddhist can be granted Scheduled Caste status. Initially it was only for Hindus, however, later by way of an amendment in 1956 Sikhs were added and in 1990 Buddhists were included in the list.

A 2007 report submitted by National Commission for Religious and Linguistic Minorities, under the Chairpersonship of retired CJI Ranganath Misra had found merit for granting Scheduled Caste status to Dalit Christians.

On the last occasion the Apex Court directed the Union Government to file its affidavit within a period of 3 weeks. The petitioners were asked to file the rejoinder within a week thereafter.

On Wednesday, appearing before a Bench comprising Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul, A.S. Oka and Vikram Nath on behalf of Centre for Public Interest Litigation, one of the petitioners, Advocate, Mr. Prashant Bhushan submitted that in its latest affidavit, the Centre has submitted that they want to appoint another commission to examine the same issue. He added that the Union Government has sought the matter to be deferred by 2 years, precisely, the time period that would be required for the new Commission to come up with a report.

The Bench indicated that the first issue that needs to be gone into is whether the Apex Court should await the report of the Commission, recently constituted by the Union Government.

"The first aspect to be dealt with is whether this Court should stay its hands till the report of this Commission comes or whether it should proceed on the basis the material on record", the bench noted in the order while posting the matter to January 2023.

The Solicitor General, Mr.Tushar Mehta emphasised on the importance of contemporaneous data to understand the implication of the issue at hand. He submitted -

"If I belong to SC I will have some social disadvantages. Now, hypothetically, I become a Christian would I be more acceptable, my name changes, etc. That has to be examined."

In 2020, the Supreme Court had issued notice in a PIL filed by an organization named National Council of Dalit Christians(NCDC) seeking a direction to grant Scheduled Castes (SC) status to Dalit Christians.

[Case Title: Ghazi Saaduddin v. State of Maharashtra C.A. No. 329-330/2004]