Muslims not a minority community in UP: HC

Allahabad, Apr 5 (UNI) Allahabad High Court today ruled that Muslims have ceased to be a religious minority community in Uttar Pradesh.

The ruling came in the backdrop of the impending state assembly election.

The HC passed this order on a consideration of the materials on record, which includes various census reports including census reports of 1951 and 2001.

The court, therefore, directed the state of UP to treat any member of Muslim communiy equal to other non-minority religious communities without discrimination in any respect in accordance with law being an integral part of citizenary of India.

Justice S N Srivastava passed this order on a writ petition filed by committee of management Anjuman Madarasa Noorul Islam Dehralakan, Ghazipur through its manager.

The petitioner had filed the writ seeking mandamus, commanding the respondents to recognize his institution on grant-in-aid list in similarly situated manners as other non-minority institutions are being dealt with in accordance with law without any discrimination.

The court passed this order as an operative part of the judgement of the writ petition.

The court, however, has said part of the order shall be followed by the rest of judgement. The court has allowed the writ and quashed the impugned order of May 17, 2004, whereby other institutions were brought as grant-in-aid.

UNI