NEW DELHI, March 24 — The Supreme Court affirmed on Tuesday that individuals lose their Scheduled Caste (SC) status immediately and completely upon converting from Hinduism, Sikhism, or Buddhism to other religions. A Bench comprising Justices Prashant Kumar Mishra and NV Anjaria maintained that the bar for receiving statutory benefits is absolute for those professing faiths outside the three specified in the Constitution (Scheduled Caste) Order, 1950.
The ruling upheld a previous decision by the Andhra Pradesh High Court, which stated that an individual who actively practices Christianity cannot be regarded as a member of the SC community. The Bench asserted that no constitutional protection or reservation can be extended to a person who is not deemed a member of the Scheduled Caste under Clause 3 of the 1950 order. The court declared that a person cannot simultaneously practice a different religion and claim membership in a Scheduled Caste.
This legal clarification arose from a case involving Chinthada Anand, a pastor who had filed a criminal case in 2021 invoking the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act. The High Court had earlier quashed those charges, stating that the caste system is alien to Christianity. The Supreme Court noted that the evidence established the appellant had functioned as a pastor for more than a decade, conducting regular Sunday prayers.
The Bench affirmed that since the petitioner had not re-converted to his original religion or been accepted back into the Madiga community, he remained a Christian on the date of the alleged incident. Consequently, the court maintained that he was ineligible to invoke the special protections afforded by the SC/ST Act, as his conversion resulted in the loss of his prior status regardless of his birth.
