High Court snatches away Sikhs' status in Punjab

High Court snatches away Sikhs' status in Punjab Written by A Singh Thursday, December 20, 2007 WSN had warned in May this will happen

That the desires of the majority of the people are often for injustice and inhumanity against the minority, is demonstrated by every page of the history of the whole world. -John Adam

CHANDIGARH: It was in May that the World Sikh News had warned the Sikh community about the Indian government's overt strategy to take away control of hundreds of Sikh institutions from the SGPC by bringing in a legislation and "re-defining" the term "minority". Except for a cursory statement by Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal and some politically-correct statements from former chairman of India's Minorities Commission, Tarlochan Singh, nothing much was done as a follow up.
Now, the chickens have come home to roost. In a shocking judgment, the Punjab and Haryana High Court has ruled that Sikhs were not a minority community anymore in Punjab and thus cannot claim the benefit of reservation as a "minority" in seeking admission to Sikh education institutions run by the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee in Punjab.
The court set aside the Punjab notifications declaring SGPC-run Sikh institutions as minority institutions, permitting them to reserve 50 per cent seats for members of the Sikh community.
A Bench comprising Justice Adarsh Kumar Goel and Justice Ajai Lamba gave the judgment while allowing the petition of a Barnala non-Sikh student who was denied admission after having been rejected in the counseling as a fallout of these notifications.
"There was no material or even a grievance that as a group the Sikhs apprehended deprivation of their religious, cultural or educational rights in Punjab from any other community which may be in majority and which may gain political power," the High Court said.
The High Court judgment is in keeping with a draft legislation now before the Indian parliament. Not a single Akali Dal MP has raised a single question in Parliament, nor has the SGPC filed any application under the Right to Information Act to seek details of the draft law.
In its May 9-15, 2007 edition (available on www.WorldSikhNews.com), the WSN had clearly warned that "the SGPC may lose its right to run medical or dental colleges as minority institutions, while the Christians will be able to run the CMC, Ludhiana as a minority institution. Muslims’ institutions in Kashmir will not be treated as minority institutions."
It had said: "One of the biggest attacks on the status of Sikhs in India is on way. You have been warned. The Government of India is now set to define the term ‘minority’ and give it a clear cut legal definition. The minorities will now be only and only at the state level and no national minority will exist in India. In such a scenario, Sikhs will not be a minority anymore. The central government will soon move a constitutional amendment in Parliament to establish the procedure for defining minorities and laying down the criteria to be fulfilled for a group to find place in the list of minorities."
The draft bill is called the 103rd Amendment Bill 2004 and was cleared in the first week of May 2007.
That amendment draft has now been cleared by the Cabinet. That it happened under the watch of a Sikh Prime Minister is all the more disappointing for the Sikh community. Since 1980 the Minorities Commission had been treating Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists and Zoroastrians as religious minorities at the national level. The communities were notified when the National Commission for Minorities Act came into force in 1993.
Incidentally, even as the upcoming law defines a ‘minority’ at state level only, one clause gives Indian Parliament the final say in the matter of defining ‘minorities’. Parliament will be empowered to enact laws to include or exclude any section of citizens from the list of minorities.
This means that the Indian Parliament can still term Sikhs in India a minority even if they do not make it to the list of minorities going by the fact that they outnumber the Hindus in Punjab. But for this, the Sikhs will have to beseech the Centre first.
Punjab CM Badal's media advisor Harcharan Bains said the government will move the Supreme Court against this order after looking at the details of the ruling, and conceded that "this ruling has another side also and can have national implications."
The Punjab government had taken the plea that as per definition of Sikh in the All India Sikh Gurdwara Act of 1925 which also governs SGPC, only "a person who is baptized and follows religious customs of Sikh community is a Sikh". Since the baptized Sikhs are outnumbered in Punjab, they are a minority. The Gurdwara Act didn't recognize a Sikh with trimmed beard and shaved head. The High Court however didn't agree with this argument.
Many sections are blaming the Advocate General H S Mattewal and his officers of botching up the case. It seems the government failed to build up a case that since the SGPC is conducting an All India Entrance Test for admissions to its professional education colleges, the status of minority or majority of Sikhs can't be considered at state level. Also, it failed to underline properly that only the baptized Sikhs are covered by reservation.

Source:http://worldsikhnews.com/index.php?o...302&Itemid=399