Early Times Report
Jammu, Apr 10: Directions of the Supreme Court once again revived hopes of the Hindus to get minority status in the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir.
The Supreme Court Monday gave the states of Rajasthan and Telangana and the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir six weeks to submit their responses on the issue of identification of minorities at the state level after the Centre pleaded for giving them a ”last opportunity”.
Additional Solicitor General (ASG) K M Nataraj, appearing for the Centre, told a bench of Justices S K Kaul and A Amanullah that responses were still awaited from Rajasthan and Telangana. Part reply from Jammu and Kashmir was also awaited, he said.
In 2017, the then PDP-BJP coalition government had refused to acknowledge Hindus as ‘minority’ in J&K. The then PDP-BJP government had filed an application in the Supreme Court stating that benefits of welfare schemes would only be given to members of those communities, which were notified by the Centre, suggesting that Hindus would not be eligible.
The National Commission for Minorities Act could not be extended to J&K due to Article 370.
According to Census 2011, Hindus account for 28.43 percent of the state’s population at 3.56 million. Meanwhile, total population of Muslims in the erstwhile state of J&K is 85, 67,485, while there are 35, 66,674 Hindus.
Buddhist population, which stood at 1, 137,87 as per Census 2001, has declined by 1.2 per cent in the past one decade. According to Census 2011, there were 1, 12,584 Buddhists in J&K. |
