The Jain community was accorded minority
status by the central government on Monday, which will enable them to avail of
benefits in government schemes and programmes.
The decision to grant minority status to the
community of about 50 lakh was taken at a meeting of Union Cabinet in New Delhi
on Monday, a day after Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi took up this issue
with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
A group of Jains had met Rahul on Sunday to
press for their long-standing demand for minority status and Rahul then spoke
to Singh in their support.
The Jains became the sixth community to have minority status after Muslims, Christians,
Sikhs, Buddhists and Parsis.
Minority Affairs Minister K Rahman Khan said
his ministry would soon issue a notification on the issue. Once recognised as a minority, Jains would get
a share in central funds earmarked for welfare programmes and scholarships for
the minorities. They can also manage and administer their own educational
institutions. The community is already
enjoying minority status in some states like Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh,
Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan but the new decision extends that status across the
country. Numerically, the Jain community
is small, with a population of about 50
lakh but they are prosperous, mostly engaged in business.
Khan said there
had been a lot of representations from the community that they be treated as a
minority. The ministry moved a cabinet
note to this effect after Attorney
General G E Vahanvati gave his go-ahead to their inclusion among notified
minorities. The Cabinet approved the
inclusion of Jains in the list of notified minority communities under Section
2(c) of the National Commission for
Minorities Act, 1992 pending the outcome of court cases in addition to the
five communities already notified as minorities under Section 2(c) of the
National Commission for Minorities Act, 1992, an official statement said in New
Delhi on Monday. Under Section 2 (c) of
National Commission for Minorities (NCM) Act, 1992, five religious communities
-- Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists
and Parsis are declared as minority communities through a government
notification issued in October 1993. Thereafter,
the Ministry of Minority Affairs has been receiving regular representations and
RTI applications for inclusion of Jains as a minority community under this
Section, the statement said.