Supreme Court upholds quashing of Tamil Nadu order on quota for converts to Islam

The Supreme Court on Thursday, 15 October 2026, dismissed an appeal by the Tamil Nadu government against a Madras High Court ruling that struck down a State order on reservation for people who convert to Islam. A bench of Justices Prashant Kumar Mishra and Shree Chandrashekhar held that a person who converts from the Hindu social order to a non-Hindu one cannot claim affirmative action under Article 16(4) of the Constitution merely on the basis of backwardness associated with the earlier status, according to Bar & Bench, The Hindu and The News Mill. The judgment text was not available to us; this report relies on those outlets’ accounts of it.

What the court held

Bar & Bench quoted the court as saying that “backwardness suffered in the antecedent social order cannot by itself be carried forward so as to confer upon him the status of a backward class in the religion to which he has converted.” The bench also referred to Paragraph 3 of the Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order, 1950, under which a person who professes a religion other than Hinduism, Sikhism or Buddhism cannot be deemed a member of a Scheduled Caste.

Bar & Bench reported that the court added that a person who reconverts to Hinduism would not automatically be entitled to reclaim the earlier backward status either; that question cannot be decided merely by reference to the antecedent status. The Hindu reported that Justice Mishra, who read out the operative portion, said a government notification of a community as backward should be preceded by statutory social checks and data enumeration.

Background

The case arose from a Tamil Nadu order dated 9 March 2024. It allowed people from Backward Classes, Most Backward Classes, Denotified Communities and Scheduled Castes who converted to Islam to be treated as Backward Class Muslims, provided they held a community certificate for one of seven notified Muslim sects.

Sameer Ahamed, born to Hindu parents in Thoothukudi district, converted to Islam in 2015 and applied for a community certificate as a “Muslim Lebbai”. The Tahsildar rejected the application and he approached the Madras High Court. According to The Hindu, the High Court’s judgment of 25 June held that a person who embraces Islam cannot claim backward-class (Muslim) status and quashed the order; the High Court also described the order as “not only unconstitutional but also un-Islamic”, Bar & Bench reported. Outlets differ on the year given for that judgment, so we give only the date.

Before the Supreme Court, the State relied on the recommendation of the Tamil Nadu Backward Classes Commission and argued that a 1951 Madras High Court decision on Scheduled Castes did not bar it from classifying a previously backward convert as a backward Muslim, The Hindu reported.

What happens next

None of the three outlets reported a further step by the State government as of Thursday afternoon, 15 October 2026.