GUWAHATI: The Supreme Court on Thursday, October 15, refused to interfere with a Madras High Court judgment holding that a person converting from Hinduism to Islam cannot claim reservation under the Backward Class (Muslim) category solely on the basis of their pre-conversion caste status.
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A bench of Justices PK Mishra and Shree Chandrasekhar dismissed the Tamil Nadu government's plea challenging the High Court's June 25 judgment.
“Backwardness suffered in the antecedent social order cannot by itself be carried forward so as to confer upon him the status of a backward class in the religion to which he has converted,” the Supreme Court observed.
The court further stated that conversion to a non-Hindu social order does not automatically confer membership of a particular backward caste community. A person's pre-conversion caste or community status cannot, merely because of conversion, be transferred to a notified backward class community in the new religious order.
The case arose from a 2024 Government Order issued by the Tamil Nadu government, which allowed people converting to Islam from Backward Classes (BC), Most Backward Classes (MBC), Denotified Communities or Scheduled Castes to be treated as BC (Muslim) and obtain community certificates under one of seven notified sects to claim reservation benefits.
The Madras High Court had declared the Government Order unconstitutional, prompting the state government to challenge the decision before the Supreme Court.
The Tamil Nadu government argued that people who are socially and educationally backward should not lose reservation benefits merely because they convert to another religion.
However, the Supreme Court observed that statutory benefits, reservations and other entitlements under Article 16(4), where eligibility depends on membership of a particular social order, cannot be claimed solely on the basis of previous membership after conversion to Islam, Christianity or another non-Hindu social order.
The court held that such conversion severs the legal basis of an entitlement conditioned on membership of the Hindu social order.
