Q. With reference to Minorities in India, consider the following statements:
1. The Indian Constitution defines minority as ‘a community notified as such by the Central Government.’
2. The States can declare communities as minorities within their territorial jurisdiction.
Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
Exp) Option b is the correct answer.
Statement 1 is incorrect: The constitution mentioned the term ‘minority’ only on two occasions in Article 29 and in Article 30, but it nowhere defines the term. It was left at the discretion of central government. Using this discretionary power the central government enacted the National Commission for Minorities Act, 1992 which defines minorities as those belonging to the communities notified under Section 2(of the Minorities Act.
Statement 2 is correct: State governments can declare any religious or linguistic community, including Hindus, as a minority within the said state. For instance, the Maharashtra government has notified ‘Jews’ as a minority community within the state. Moreover, the Karnataka government has notified Urdu, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, Marathi, Tulu, Lamani, Hindi, Konkani and Gujarati languages as minority languages within the state of Karnataka.
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