Supreme Court upholds bar on SC status after religious conversion

The Supreme Court ruled that individuals who convert to religions other than Hinduism, Sikhism or Buddhism cannot claim Scheduled Caste status or related benefits. The court upheld an Andhra Pradesh High Court decision quashing a pastor’s case filed under the SC/ST Act

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Tuesday said that no person professing a religion other than Hinduism, Sikhism or Buddhism can be regarded as a member of a Scheduled Caste.

A bench of Justices Prashant Kumar Mishra and NV Anjaria, upholding an order of the Andhra Pradesh High Court, said that a person belonging to a Scheduled Caste community loses his SC status immediately and completely upon conversion to another religion.

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“No statutory benefit, protection or reservation or entitlement under the Constitution or enactment of Parliament or state legislature can be claimed by or extended to any person who, by operation of clause 3, is not deemed to be a member of the Scheduled Caste.

“This bar is absolute and admits no exception. A person can’t simultaneously profess and practice a religion other than the one specified in clause 3 and claim membership of the Scheduled Caste,” the bench said.

The Andhra Pradesh High Court on April 30, 2025, held that once an individual converts to Christianity and actively professes and practices the faith, he cannot be regarded as a member of the Scheduled Caste community.

The High Court has held that the caste system is alien to Christianity and is consequently barred from invoking the provisions of the Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.

It quashed charges filed by a complainant who had converted to Christianity and had invoked the SC and ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act in a criminal case.

Aggrieved by the order, the man, a pastor, moved the apex court challenging the High Court decision.

The top court noted that the Constitution (Scheduled Caste) Order, 1950, has made it clear that conversion to any religion not specified in Clause 3 of the 1950 order results in immediate loss of Schedule Caste status, regardless of birth, and this bar was “absolute”.

“In the present case, it is not the case of the petitioner that he re-converted from Christianity to his original religion or has been accepted back into the folds of the Madiga community.

“On the contrary, the evidence establishes that the appellant continued to profess Christianity and has been functioning as a pastor for more than a decade, conducting regular Sunday prayers at the houses of the village,” the court said.

The bench noted that at the time of the alleged incident, he was conducting prayer meetings at the house.

“These concurrent facts leave no room for doubt that he continued to remain a Christian on the date of the occurrence,” the bench said on the facts of the case.

The pastor Chinthada Anand had filed a criminal case in 2021 against one Akkala Rami Reddy, invoking various sections of the Indian Penal Code and the SC/ST Act, alleging that a person had assaulted him while he was performing pastoral duties and conducting Sunday prayers in a village in Andhra Pradesh.

He claimed that he was subjected to multiple assaults by Rami Reddy, and he and his family were given death threats and abused in the name of their caste.