New Delhi: Supreme Court said under the Constitution, fundamental right of religious and linguistic minority communities under Article 30 to establish and administer educational institutions cannot be made subservient to laws recognising their degrees, regulations on infrastructure and faculty requirements, and government aid.
This was the reaction from a bench of CJI (Chief Justice of India) D Y Chandra- chud and Justices Sanjiv Khanna, Surya Kant, JB Par- diwala, Dipankar Datta, Manoj Misra and Satish Sharma after attorney general R Venkataramani argued that “Article 30 is an enabling provision… In order that an educational institution of a particular character/class could be established by any person, minority or otherwise, the first prerequisite is legal competence/authority to establish that class of institution.”
CJI said, “Problem about the argument is that Article 30 right is contingent upon requirements of a Parliament enacted statute. Enabling regulations is understandable as the minority institution must also have requisite infrastructure and experienced faculty to attain a national standard in education. Mere establishment of an institution by legislature-enacted law would not take away its ‘minority’ character”
The bench said no minority community, or for that matter any community, today can say that it would establish an institution without recognition under relevant laws or the UGC Act. It added that no minority institution would lose its denominational character merely because it gets grants as very few institutions in today’s world can survive without financial aid from government. Venkataramani listened to the remarks and explained that he never meant to say Article 30 rights were subservient to Parliament-enacted laws. “The words, ‘educational institutions of their choice’ cannot be construed by itself conferring an authority to establish any class of institutions regardless of any legal competence to do so,” he added.
“Authority to establish a given class of institutions must first precede, be traceable to and must be located under an enabling statute. Within the scope of an enabling legal framework which may confer the authority to establish institutions, the choice aspect will be unfettered and free.
This is the essence of Article 30. So, neither prior to the Constitution nor under it a minority community was clothed with authority to establish a university,” he said.
