New Delhi: The Tamil Nadu government has approached the Supreme Court of India to challenge a recent Madras High Court judgment that struck down a controversial state policy regarding affirmative action. The state’s formal appeal contests the June 25, 2026, ruling, which declared that individuals converting to Islam cannot claim reservation benefits under the Backward Class Muslim category based solely on their religious conversion. The appeal, filed by the secretary to the state government, seeks to overturn the high court’s decision and restore the validity of a specific Government Order originally issued on March 9, 2024.
The annulled Government Order had permitted eligible Hindus from Backward Classes, Most Backward Classes, Denotified Communities, and Scheduled Castes who embraced Islam to be classified under one of the seven recognized Backward Class Muslim sects. This administrative move was designed to ensure that converts could obtain official community certificates and maintain their access to vital reservation benefits in education and public employment. However, a Division Bench comprising Justices G.R. Swaminathan and P.B. Balaji struck down the government directive, ruling it unconstitutional and fundamentally incompatible with binding judicial precedents from both the Supreme Court and the Madras High Court. The presiding judges firmly noted that the state executive could not override firmly established legal principles simply through an administrative order.
In its comprehensive ruling, the Madras High Court maintained that while an individual has the fundamental right to embrace Islam, they become solely a Muslim upon conversion and cannot claim membership in a specific birth-based community, such as the Labbai or Rowther sects, merely to secure reservation benefits. The court emphasized that categorizing certain Islamic sects as backward while excluding others runs contrary to the core egalitarian principles of the religion, noting that Islam does not inherently recognize a social hierarchy. Consequently, the judicial bench determined that a change in faith does not automatically grant a person access to specific, notified Backward Class Muslim categories.
The origins of this complex legal battle stem from a writ petition filed by Sameer Ahamed, a man born into a Hindu family in the Thoothukudi district who formally converted to Islam in 2015. After completing his religious conversion, which was officially recognized through a public Gazette notification in 2016, Ahamed married according to Islamic rites. He subsequently applied for a state community certificate identifying him as a “Muslim Lebbai” to avail himself of continued reservation benefits, but a local tehsildar ultimately rejected his application. This initial administrative rejection prompted Ahamed to seek legal recourse in the high court, setting off a chain of litigation that has now reached the nation’s apex court and could dramatically influence affirmative action policies for religious converts across Tamil Nadu.
