The decision was taken today at a meeting of the council of ministers headed by Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit.

The Jains, primarily a business and traders’ community, have been demanding the status for the past several years. In Delhi, the community is known to have largely backed the Bharatiya Janata Party till date.

The community has an estimated population of between 4 lakh and 5 lakh in the Capital. They comprise about 0.45 per cent of Delhi’s population. Post-status, the city’s Jains will now be at par with other minority communities — such as Buddhists, Christians, Sikhs, Muslims and Parsis — listed as notified minority groups under the Delhi Minorities Commission Act, 1999.

Diskhit said this would help the Jain community to effectively manage their educational institutions as per parameters specified for minority institutions.

“We have been demanding the minority status for the past several years but the government had been ignoring our demands,” Chakresh Jain, head of the Delhi Jain Samaj, told Newsline. “We wanted the minority status as enshrined in the Indian Constitution, which empowers the government to accord minority status to six marginal ethno-religious groups, so that we can teach Jainism to our children in schools and institutions run by us and preserve our cultural identity.”

Congress MLA Rajesh Jain, the community’s sole representative in Delhi Assembly, said, “This is not a political move.” The MLA from Sadar Bazaar, which has a sizeable number of Jains, said it was part of the party’s manifesto in the last elections. With today’s decision, “we have fulfilled one of our promises”.

But Delhi BJP president Harsh Vardhan questioned the timing of the decision — just before the Assembly elections, scheduled for November. “What was the Sheila Dikshit government doing for the past 10 years?” he asked.