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Ashwini Upadhyay a BJP leader, moved to Supreme Court to seek direction upon Central Government to lay down guidelines for identification of minorities "at the state level". In the TMA Pai case, it was held by the Supreme Court that the State would be the unit for determining the status of linguistic and religious minorities. The court stated that " Since the recognition of the States has been on linguistic lines, therefore, to determine the minority, the unit will be the state and not whole India". The petitioner is aggrieved by five communities in the instant case those are Muslims, Christians, Parsee, Sikhs, Buddhists as minorities at the national level. He states that giving them the right to administer and establish educational institutions for minority communities while depriving these rights of the followers of Judaism, Bahaism, and Hinduism. In the petition, he mentioned, " it is respectfully submitted that denial of minority rights to the real minorities and arbitrary and unreasonable disbursement of the minority benefits to the absolute majority, infringes upon the fundamental right to the prohibition of discrimination on the grounds of religion, race, caste, place of birth (Article 15); impairs the right to equality of opportunity in the matters related to the public employment (Article 16); and offend the freedom of conscience and right to freely profess, practice and propagate religion (Article 25); it also erodes the obligation of the state 'to endeavor to eliminate inequalities in status facilities opportunity (Article 38)." The Petitioner giving instances of such discrimination through his Advocate Ashwani Kumar Dubey stated that it was declared by the center, Muslims as minority community 96.58% in Lakshadweep, 95% in Kashmir and 46% in Ladakh and same goes for other 4 communities but the center didn't declare Bahaism and Judaism as minority communities though 0.1% and 0.2% people follow it respectively at the national level. The plea challenges Section 2(f) of the National Commission for Minority, Education, Institution Act, 2004. The plea filed by Ashwini Upadhyay was disposed of by the court which was to seek minority status for Hindus in eight states.
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