Conversion alone does not make a person a backward class Muslim, Supreme Court rules

The Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed the Tamil Nadu government’s appeal against a Madras High Court ruling that struck down a 2024 order allowing people who convert to Islam to obtain Backward Class Muslim community certificates.

A bench of Justices Prashant Kumar Mishra and Shree Chandrashekhar held that religious conversion does not, on its own, make a person eligible to be counted in a different notified backward class community. A convert “doesn’t become a member of one of the seven notified backward class social communities in the State”, the court said, simply by changing religion.

The state’s order of March 2024 covered converts from the Backward Classes, Most Backward Classes, Denotified Communities and Scheduled Castes, and let them obtain certificates under the seven Muslim communities recognised as backward in Tamil Nadu.

How the case began

The dispute began with Sameer Ahamed, who converted from Hinduism to Islam in 2015, changed his name and married according to Islamic rites. He applied for a Muslim Lebbai community certificate, and the local administration turned him down. In June 2026 the Madras High Court struck down the government order as unconstitutional, holding that conversion alone does not establish membership of a Muslim backward class community for reservation.

Tamil Nadu argued before the Supreme Court that the High Court had wrongly interfered with executive policy that followed the recommendations of a statutory commission. The bench, which reserved its verdict in August, did not accept that.

The court said the social backwardness a person carried in their former religious and social order cannot by itself be carried over into another community’s category, and that a private religious body cannot conclusively decide who is eligible for statutory reservation benefits. The case concerned reservation in public employment under Article 16(4) of the Constitution.