NEW DELHI: The Tamil Nadu government has moved the Supreme Court, challenging a Madras High Court decision striking down its 2024 order permitting converts to Islam to claim BC (Muslim) status.
The appeal has been filed by the secretary of the TN government against the HC judgment declaring the Government Order (GO) issued on March 9, 2024, unconstitutional.
The impugned GO had permitted persons belonging to Backward Classes (BC), Most Backward Classes (MBC), De-notified Communities (DNC), or Scheduled Castes (SC) who subsequently converted to Islam to be treated as BC (Muslim) and obtain community certificates under one of the seven notified Muslim communities for the purpose of availing reservation benefits.
The HC, in its judgment on June 24, 2024, had ruled that a person who converts to Islam can only be considered a ‘Muslim’ and cannot automatically be classified under one of the state’s notified ‘Backward Class Muslim’ communities. The court pointed out that such communities are defined based on birth.
The HC bench of Justices G R Swaminathan and P B Balaji, while passing the order, stated that the GO conflicted with established legal principles and that executive power could not be exercised to create eligibility for the BC (Muslim) category for converts in violation of existing law.
The bench held that a person converting to Islam “cannot claim the status of a Backward Class Muslim” and that “he is merely a Muslim, and nothing more.” Furthermore, the court observed that since the seven ‘Backward Class Muslim’ (BCM) categories recognised in Tamil Nadu are communities defined by birth, an individual cannot be included in one of them solely on the grounds of religious conversion.
The court also noted the seven recognised BC (Muslim) categories in TN : Ansar, Deccani Muslim, Dudekula, Labbai, Mappila, Shaikh, and Syed. The petitioner, Sameer Ahmed, converted to Islam in 2015, changed his name, and married according to Islamic rites. Subsequently, he applied for a community certificate, identifying himself as a “Muslim Labbai.” His request was rejected, and this rejection became the subject of the writ petition filed in the HC.