The Madras High Court last week quashed an order passed by the Tamil Nadu government allowing people from Backward Classes (BC), Most Backward Classes (MBC), Scheduled Communities (DNC) and Scheduled Castes (SC) who converted to Islam to continue availing reservation benefits.
In doing so, the court reaffirmed the legal principle laid down by the Madras High Court over seven decades ago – that conversion to Islam changes a person’s religion, but “does not automatically make a person a member of one of the recognized backward Muslim communities of the state”.
The ruling, delivered by Justices GR Swaminathan and BP Balaji on June 25, stated that the executive cannot override binding judicial precedent through an executive order, and that any change in legal status must come through legislation, not administrative instructions.
The case
The order came based on a petition filed by Sameer Ahmed, who was born into a Hindu family, converted to Islam in 2015, and sought a community certificate identifying him as a Labai Muslim. One person had his application rejected for ‘Backward Class Muslim’ in 2022 on the grounds that he had converted to a religion, not a caste.
Ahmed appealed the tehsildar’s refusal in the Supreme Court. While his petition was pending, the Tamil Nadu government issued a Government Order (GO) on March 9, 2024, mandating that converts to Islam from BC, MBC, DNC and SC should be treated as backward class Muslims. This gives them certificates that place them within one of the seven notified BCM communities in the state.
The Supreme Court considered this policy legally impermissible, ruled the government unconstitutional, and upheld the original rejection of Ahmed’s request. The court said: “A convert to Islam cannot claim to be a backward class Muslim. He is just a Muslim, and that is all there is to it.”
It explained that conversion to Islam is an exercise of the fundamental right to freedom of religion under Article 25 of the Constitution, but the question before it was different: whether conversion entitles a person to the reservation benefits reserved for members of notified BCM communities.
Read also: A touchstone for the basic structure of anti-conversion laws
precedent 1951
The June ruling is based on a principle laid down by the Madras High Court 75 years ago, in G Michael v S Venkateswaran – an election dispute in which a bench of then Chief Justice B V Rajamannar and Justice T L Venkatarama Aiyar had to determine the legal status of a Hindu convert to Islam.
The question then, as now, was whether a convert could claim membership of a particular Muslim community on the basis of the class identity that existed before conversion.
The bench answered in the negative. Upon conversion, she said, a person becomes “merely a Muslim,” and ceases to belong to a caste without automatically gaining membership of any particular Muslim community.
In the latest ruling, a bench of Justice Swaminathan held that this has remained “settled law” for more than seven decades. Communities like Labbai, Rowther, Marakkayar, Deccani Muslim, Sheikh, and Syed are birth-based groups. Anyone may freely embrace Islam as a religion, but membership in these communities cannot be gained through conversion alone. The court noted that although Islam preaches equality, historical developments have produced distinct Muslim communities in India that may function as social groups based on birth for purposes of reservation, even when Islamic theology does not recognize hierarchy.
Since then, the Supreme Court has upheld the 1951 ruling on multiple occasions. In its 2015 judgment in KP Manu v. Audit Commission, the Supreme Court said: “There is no doubt that it is true, and we agree with the Madras High Court in J Michael that the general rule is that conversion operates as an expulsion from caste.”
In the 2024 reconversion case, C. Selvarani v. Private Secretary, she cited J. Michael again: “The general rule is that conversion operates as an expulsion from caste; in other words, the convert ceases to have any caste.”
The Madras High Court also referred to the ruling by Justice Swaminathan in 2022, which dismissed a similar suit on the same grounds.
Read also: West Bengal Assembly passes OBC Amendment Bill, removing 77 Muslim communities from the list
Why was GO beaten down?
The court held that the issue was not just about the content of government, but sought to achieve the following: Once the law is settled by binding precedent, the executive cannot issue an administrative order that leads to an adverse legal result. If the government disagrees with the judicial interpretation, its remedy lies in legislation, not in executive instructions.
Although Ahmed’s petition only challenged the order of the tehsildar and not the government’s government itself, the Supreme Court held that it could still examine the validity of the government’s government, since its implementation had become pivotal to the case.
The court said that courts can declare an executive action invalid even without specifically challenging it, provided that the question of its legality arises directly in the proceedings.
Furthermore, the court also found the scheme to be arbitrary on its own terms. The GO would have placed converts from four different categories—BC, MBC, DNC, and SC—in any of the seven notified BCM communities, effectively bringing together categories that the Supreme Court has consistently treated as constitutionally distinct.
