The petition contended that Muslim leaders have not been included in the list of anniversaries although the community has produced great many political leaders like Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Zakir Hussain, Dr A P J Abdul Kalam and religious leaders like Khwaja Garib Nawaz.
The petition, filed by Sarfaraz Arzu, Editor of Hindustan, an Urdu daily, Mumbai resident Khalid Muttam and Farid Shaikh, president of NGO Mumbai Aman Committee, would come up for hearing in due course.
The respondents to the petition are Maharashtra government, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, Minority Affairs Minister Eknath Khadse and Minorities Commission Chairman Amir Hussain.
"...It is unfortunate that the government has not been able to find a single great figure from the Muslim community. It is in national interest that students and masses should know that Indian Muslims have done service of the motherland and humanity, but somehow what the people come to know is the gloomy part of some misguided Muslims creating a false Islamophobia," the petition states.
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"National heroes who are Muslims have been deliberately forgotten and supressed and common young Indian is kept ignorant of their greatness," he said.
"The government in power, which swears by the Constitution, is expected to take all the sections of society in the task of nation-building, and public space cannot be appropriated by only one section of the society to the exclusion of others," he said.
The notification has been passed without any application of mind and is therefore null and void, it further said.
The petitioner prayed that the impugned notification may be quashed and set aside and until the petition is decided finally, a stay may be granted on the GR.