Christian and Muslim not Scheduled Castes says Government

Indian Central government has decided to not provide the Scheduled Caste status to kids of Christian and Muslim parents. If either parent is a Dalit - and that definition is restricted to Sikhs, Hindus, and Buddhists - then and only then, the Scheduled Caste status will apply.

One more thing that the Government is doing is to also overturn a Supreme Court ruling where it said that the SC status will flow only from a Dalit father and not a mother - since in Indian context that is how it happens. Government feels that the SC status should apply to kids who father or mother is a Dalit.

The earlier draft merely said "the child born of inter-caste marriage shall be taken as belonging to SC if either of the parents belong to that community". It has now been modified to include that "if either of the parent belong to such a caste (SC) and the other parent belongs to neither SC nor ST but professes one of the religions which a person belonging to SC may profess".

It also means that the status of the converts - to Islam and Christianity - is not the same as the status of Dalits who decided not to. The UPA government had set up the Ranganath Mishra commission to go into this question and got a favourable recommendation, but ostensibly has decided not to go with that recommendation.