Stalin urges Tamil Nadu government to challenge SC ruling on reservation for Muslim converts

DMK president M.K. Stalin on Thursday urged the Tamil Nadu government to seek legal remedies against a Supreme Court ruling that denied backward class reservation to people who converted to Islam based on their previous caste status.

“Social backwardness does not arise in a day or a generation. It is the result of a social system built over thousands of years. Conversion to another religion does not erase it,” Stalin said in a statement.

The Supreme Court upheld a Madras High Court judgment that struck down a 2024 Tamil Nadu government order. The order allowed people who converted to Islam from Backward Classes (BC), Most Backward Classes (MBC), Denotified Communities and Scheduled Castes (SC) to obtain community certificates under the Backward Class (Muslim) category.

A bench comprising Justices Prashant Kumar Mishra and Shree Chandrashekhar dismissed the state government's challenge. It held that conversion to Islam does not automatically qualify a person for reservation based on their previous caste status.

“Backwardness suffered on account of an antecedent social order cannot, by itself, be carried forward so as to confer upon a person the status of a backward class in the social order to which they have converted,” the court observed.

Stalin argued that members of BC, MBC and SC communities who had experienced caste-based oppression should retain reservation benefits despite religious conversion.

He also cited the previous DMK government's efforts to secure reservation for Adi Dravidas who converted to Christianity. The government had adopted a resolution seeking such benefits and called for a constitutional amendment.

Stalin urged the current Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) government to continue those efforts.

“Extending reservation benefits to BC, MBC and SC communities that have experienced caste-based oppression, based on that history of oppression, is the path to social justice,” he said.

“Denying these rights on the grounds of the religion a person follows would amount to social injustice.”