NEW DELHI: The National Commission for Minorities in a meeting of the full commission on Wednesday constituted a new sub- committee to prepare a report providing a comprehensive definition of ‘minority’ and deciding on the criteria for determining minority status of a community. In keeping with the Supreme Court order, the NCM will submit its report within three months.

NCM vice-chairman George Kurien will be leading this committee which also has on board the NCM's Muslim and Sikh member representatives Atif Rasheed and Manjit Singh Rai. NCM chairperson Ghayorul Hasan said that the commission on Wednesday decided that this committee will take into account the work done by the previous sub committee that has been working on the same issue since December 2017. Kurien was leading that committee too. It is learnt that a draft report is in the works.

The previous sub-committee was set-up by NCM in 2017 on the representation of BJP’s Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay. He approached the apex court citing no response on the matter from the NCM and the court direction on Monday came on his petition that pointed to Hindus being minorities in several states where other religious denominations were in greater numbers. The court ruled that it was for the NCM to first take a call on the issue and asked the commission to take a view on his representation.

This freshly constituted committee, with Kurien and Rai bringing to the table all the work done by them in the previous sub-committee and the challenges that they faced, will now firm up its position on the issue. Besides Kurien and Rai, Sulekha Kumbhare , the NCM Buddhist member was part of the earlier sub-committee. The NCM is of the view that the three members from the main minority communities - Muslims, Christians and Sikhs should be part of this new committee and the other NCM members can be consulted as an when required for their views.

The NCM chairman feels that the issue under study is a complex one and the biggest challenge is deciding on a standardised criteria for minority status. Some of the questions under scrutiny include concerns that if instead of national level one takes the state as a unit for determining minority status then what will happen in states where no community is in majority. Also there can be demands from district level too for minority status. Moreover there are many linguistic minorities who may also raise similar demands.

