The Uttar Pradesh government today filed a review petition in the Allahabad high court against its ruling that Muslims cannot be treated as a religious minority in the state.

Advocate General S M A Kazmi filed the review petition in the high court.

In a landmark judgment, the high court yesterday held that Muslims cannot be treated as a religious minority anymore in Uttar Pradesh.

Justice S N Srivastava gave the ruling after considering various criteria including the population of Muslims as
enumerated in the census reports of 1951 and  2001.

Terming the ruling as "unfortunate", Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav yesterday said that his government would
file an appeal against the high court order. "This judgment is a very unfortunate one...We will definitely appeal and get
the order revised," he said.

The court said the UP government should treat members of the Muslim community as equal to those belonging to the
non-minority communities without discrimination in accordance with law.

The judgment was given on a writ petition filed by a madrassa of Ghazipur district, challenging out of turn
grant-in-aid to certain other minority institutions.

The court also asking the UP government to treat all Muslim institutions applying for grant-in-aid at par with
non-minority institutions without any discrimination.

The judgment, which is likely to cause polarisation among political parties, comes two days ahead of the first
phase of the crucial Assembly elections in UP starting tomorrow.