The Tamil Nadu government has appealed against a Madras High Court decision that a convert to Islam cannot claim the status of Backward Class Muslim.

The High Court had declared unconstitutional a 2024 government order allowing converts to claim backward status.

Thoothukudi district who had embraced Islam and changed his name.

He was born to Hindu parents.

The certificate issued by the Sunnath Jamath, Kayathar, in 2015 had stated the petitioner had embraced Islam.

He had applied for a community certificate certifying him as ‘Muslim Lebbai’, a faith he claimed to follow.

However, the Kayathar Tahsildar rejected his application.

Challenging it, he had moved court.

Related Stories Watch: Explained | Can religious conversion change your reservation status? | Focus Tamil Nadu Who will decide that a religious conversion is ‘deceitful’, asks Supreme Court Meanwhile, the 2024 government order notified that a convert to Islam from Backward Classes, Most Backward Classes, Denotified Communities or Scheduled Castes ought to be treated as BC (Muslim) for availing the benefit of reservation.

The High Court, however, had held that when a Hindu, on conversion to Islam, did not carry forward the benefits of the Hindu caste or sub-caste.

The convert’s status in Islam was not decided by the caste he was part of prior to the conversion.

The court noted that Christian missionaries as well as Islamic preachers had maintained that their religions offered social equality unlike Hinduism, which had a caste hierarchy.

Conversion politics, the challenge to secularism “Having taken such a stand for effecting conversions, it is disingenuous to claim that there is hierarchy in Islam also.

In our respectful view, categorising certain sects as Backward and the remaining as Forward is antithetical to Quranic injunctions.

Islam seeks to establish an egalitarian society.

Everyone is equal in the eye of God.

There is no social hierarchy,” the court had said.

The special leave petition was filed by the Secretary to the State of Tamil Nadu in the Supreme Court.

The appeal has arraigned the petitioner in the High Court, Sameer Ahamed N., the District Collector, the Revenue Divisional Officer and the Tahsildar as respondents, who had already filed caveats before the apex court.