With an aim to beef up the cause of the minorities, the United Nations promulgated the ‘Declaration on the Rights of Persons belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities’ on 18th December 1992 which proclaimed that “States shall protect the existence of the National or Ethnic, Cultural, Religious and Linguistic identity of minorities within their respective territories and encourage conditions for the promotion of that identity.” The National Commission for Minorities Act was enacted in 1992 to constitute a National Commission for Minorities and to provide for matters connected therewith or incidental thereto. The National Commission for Minorities, a statutory body was constituted by the Central Government with a view to preserve secular traditions and to promote National Integration and to exercise the powers conferred on, and to perform the functions assigned to, it under this Act. For the purposes of this Act, “Minority”, means a community notified as such by the Central Government. Vide a Gazette notification issued on 23rd October 1993 the Ministry of Welfare, Government of India has notified five religious communities viz; the Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists and Zoroastrians (Parsis) as minority communities. As per the 2001 Census, these five religious minority communities constitute 18.42% of the country’s population. The NCM Act, 1992 has prescribed the functions of the National Commission for Minorities, such as evaluation of the progress of the development of minorities under the Union and States, monitoring of the working of the safeguards for minorities provided in the Constitution and in laws enacted by Parliament and the State Legislatures, etc.
