The All India Pasmanda Muslim Mahaz (AIPMM) on Friday urged a central commission to make India's Scheduled Caste list religion-neutral and grant SC status to Dalit Muslims and Christians across the country.

An AIPMM delegation led by Ali Anwar Ansari, former Rajya Sabha MP who heads the body, met the three-member commission headed by former chief justice K G Balakrishnan here during the day.

They urged the delegation for making the SC list religion-neutral so that Pasmanda Muslims can also be included in it. Pasmanda is an umbrella term encompassing Backward, Dalit, and Adivasi Muslims.

According to a statement issued by Ansari, "We met the commission, headed by former CJI K G Balakrishnan, today and urged that the Centre must make SC status religion neutral. After the promulgation of the Constitution of India, the President, under Article 341 (1), issued the Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order 1950, listing the 'castes, races, tribes' to be included in the SC category."

"Para 3 of the order excluded all non-Hindu groups (with the provision of four Sikh castes: the Ramdasi, Kabirpanthi, Mazhabi, and Sikligar of the Punjab region). Subsequently, the SC net was expanded through amendments, and commissions and the remaining Sikh and all Buddhist castes of Dalit origins were included in the SC list. But Pasmanda Muslims have not been included in the SC list," it said.

The delegation further apprised the commission that despite their overwhelming numerical strength within the community, Pasmanda Muslims are under-represented in jobs, legislatures and government-run minority institutions, as well as community-run Muslim organisations.

Mukhtar Ansari of AIPMM, said, "The Muslims and Christians of Dalit origins have long struggled to lift the religious ban to be duly included in the SC category. Since 2004, several petitions have been filed in the Supreme Court by Dalit Muslims and Dalit Christians seeking the scrapping of Para 3 of Art 341 of the Constitution, which is seen as arbitrary and unconstitutional."

The Centre had in 2022 appointed a commission, headed by former CJI K G Balakrishnan, to consider the possibility of granting SC status to "new persons who have historically belonged to the Scheduled Castes'' but have converted to religions other than Hinduism, Buddhism and Sikhism.

The Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order, 1950 issued under clause (1) of Article 341 which currently includes only Hindu, Sikh, and Buddhist Dalits into the Scheduled Castes List.

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