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Lucknow/New Delhi
On the eve of the Uttar Pradesh assembly polls, the Allahabad High Court Friday restored the minorities status to Muslims, barely a day after a single judge bench of the same court had held that the community could not be considered as minorities in the state.

Friday's order by a division bench of the court came in a special appeal moved by the Mulayam Singh Yadav government challenging the validity of Thursday's order issued by Justice S.N. Srivastava who had ruled, "Muslims
are not entitled to be recognised as a religious minority".

While staying the earlier verdict, the bench comprising Justice S.R. Alam and Justice Krishna Murari termed it as violative of basic judicial propriety.

"Since another division bench had stayed a similar case dealing with the same questions of law, it was against judicial propriety for a single-judge bench to hear the matter at all," Justice Alam observed in the open court.

The court has fixed May 14 as the next date for hearing in the case.

Uttar Pradesh Advocate General S.M.A. Kazmi had earlier said the verdict by a single judge bench of Justice S.N. Srivastava could have far reaching consequences and could not be taken casually.

The ruling Samajwadi Party (SP), for which the stay comes as a major reprieve, had said it would go to the Supreme Court if required.

The verdict had caused a sensation in the volatile political world of Uttar Pradesh where electioneering is in full swing for the month-long seven-phase assembly polls that begin Saturday.

Muslims comprise 18.5 percent of Uttar Pradesh's population of 166 million against the national figure of 13.1 percent and are considered politically very crucial in determining the destiny of the SP.

Meanwhile, Justice Srivastava has drawn much flak from different quarters for his verdict, which said: "After applying the twin criterion of population and strength of a religious community as laid down by the
founding fathers of the Indian constitution, as is clear from the proceedings of the constituent assembly, the court finds that Muslims have ceased to be a religious minority community in Uttar Pradesh."

Both Congress and the SP were critical of the judgement. However, SP spokesman Veerendra Bhatia, who had also been the state's advocate general, went to the extent of imputing motives behind Thursday's judgment.

Congress leader and eminent lawyer Kapil Sibal, who is in Lucknow, questioned the haste with which Justice Srivastava issued the verdict just before the court was going to rise at 4 p.m.

"This was against the basic guidelines repeatedly issued by the Supreme Court," Sibal remarked, adding that he found it strange that the judge mentioned in the order that he was in a hurry to issue the operative portion of the order because he had been transferred to the Lucknow bench.

Sibal, a highly accomplished lawyer at the apex court, wondered, "How the judge could overlook the fact that an 11-judge bench of the Supreme Court had clearly laid down in 2002 that any community with less than 50 percent
population in a state would be entitled to be termed as a religious or linguistic minority."

The question that was raised before Justice Srivastava was about inclusion of a minority institution in the government's list for the special grants given to such institutions.

The petitioner, a Ghazipur-based Madrasa Noor-ul-Islam, had sought the court's intervention against what it described as discriminatory approach of the administration in excluding it from the list of beneficiaries.

The judge, turning down the plea, questioned the minority status of Muslims in the state and directed the state government, "not to treat any member of the Muslim community as equal to other non-Muslim minority religious
communities". 

IANS | April 6, 2007

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