The Supreme Court in the case Viniyog Parivar Trust vs UOI observed and has admitted a plea wherein seeking to declare the National Minority Commission Act, 1992 And the National Minority Commission, 1992 as unconstitutional.
The bench comprising of Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice Abhay Shreeniwas Oka informed the Attorney General.
The Attorney General stated that the matter is admitted and this can’t be decided at pre-admission stage. Thus, the Let pleadings, documents, everything be completed and after that the court will seek the matter for hearing.
In the present case, when it was asked by the petitioner to list the matter on a non-miscellaneous day, the Bench stated, that the court don’t understand what’s a non-miscellaneous day? The Non miscellaneous matters will get finish in half an hour. These are not the matters which will finish in half hour, It raises a point. Therefore, the Court will admit it.
An organisation named Viniyog Parivar Trust has filled the petition. However, the bench with other pending matters has tagged the petition which seek the same relief.
It was observed that the petition filled by the petitioner states that the State is not under any obligation for promoting any language, culture or script of minority communities, or to enable them for establishing and managing their educational institutions. Therefore, the State’s proactive actions and enacting of the national minorities Commission Act for establishing the National Minorities Commission on doling out the huge sums to minorities, mainly Muslims has no constitutional mandate and the same may be termed as unconstitutional.
Further, it is pointed out in the petition that utilizing the power granted under Section (2) C of the National Commission of Minorities Act 1992, the notification dated January 18, 2005 has been issued by the central government wherein, notifying five communities as minorities, namely Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, and Zoroastrians. Consequently, it also declared Jain community as a minority. The court also cleared that though there is no criteria prescribed anywhere for declaring any section of the society as minority and the aforesaid minorities are declared as such based only on one factor and which is religion.
Therefore, the petition goes to state that this is arbitrary and without our application of mind, especially when there being no criteria or guidelines laid down for the declaration of any community as a minority community.
Accordingly, the plea seeks the direction to the Centre for enacting law for all communities (except for Muslims) on the same lines as for Hindus to provide for monogamy and for restricting the number of children per family in tune with the National Population Policy.