The Supreme Court has taken on board a plea to stop using religious identity as a criterion to afford or deny communities a place within the Scheduled Caste bracket.
A Bench headed by Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul, on July 3, ordered the petition filed by Kudanthai Arasan, the president of a Kumbakonam-based political movement named the Viduthalai Tamil Puligal Katchi, to be tagged along with the pending petition seeking Scheduled Caste reservations for Dalit converts to Christianity and Islam.
Mr. Arasan, represented by advocates Franklin Caesar Thomas and Chand Qureshi, has specifically challenged the Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order 1950 issued under Article 341(1) of the Constitution. Paragraph 3 of the 1950 Order, post amendments in 1956 and 1990, mandates that anybody who is not a Hindu, Sikh or Buddhist cannot be granted Scheduled Caste status.
