Reservation status does not survive religious conversion, holds Supreme Court

The Supreme Court has held that a person who belonged to a Scheduled Caste, Most Backward Class or Backward Class community before converting to Islam cannot carry that reservation status forward by claiming to belong to a notified 'Backward Class Muslim' community after conversion. The case arose from a government order that allowed exactly such a post-conversion claim; the Madras High Court quashed the order, and the State's appeal against that quashing reached the Supreme Court as a special leave petition filed by the Secretary to the Government of Tamil Nadu against Sameer Ahamed N. and others. The Supreme Court dismissed the petition, affirming the High Court.

It reasoned that reservation benefits under Article 16(4) of the Constitution flow from a notified community's social and educational backwardness as assessed within the social order the person belonged to at the relevant time; a person who leaves the Hindu social order by converting to Islam cannot automatically carry a caste-linked backward-class status into a different, Muslim-specific backward-class category notified separately. It further held that a community certificate is only declaratory of a status that already exists — it never creates or confers that status — so no certificate issued after conversion could retroactively manufacture entitlement to the pre-conversion category's benefits.