New Delhi: A seven-judge constitution bench of the Supreme Court on Friday delivered four separate judgments in the Aligarh Muslim University minority status case. At the outset, Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud, who led the bench, said there were four separate opinions, including three dissenting verdicts. The CJI said he has written the majority verdict for himself and Justices Sanjiv Khanna, JB Pardiwala, and Manoj Misra. Justices Surya Kant, Dipankar Datta, and Satish Chandra Sharma dissented with the majority opinion.
The CJI said the majority opinion has overruled the 1967 judgment in the case of S. Azeez Basha v. Union of India, where a five-judge constitution bench held that Aligarh Muslim University was not a minority institution. However, the apex court did not answer whether Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) is a minority educational institution.
It said that another bench would be constituted to decide on a 2006 order by the Allahabad High Court overturning minority status of the educational institution.
A seven-judge constitution bench led by Chandrachud had reserved the judgment on whether the AMU can be considered a minority institution under Article 30 of the Constitution.
The CJI, reading the majority judgment, said that the view taken in Azeez Basha, which became the basis for denying the minority status to the AMU, is overruled. However, the CJI left it to a three-judge bench to decide afresh the minority status of the AMU based on the principles evolved in this judgment.
The CJI, who read the majority judgment, held that a minority institution must be both established and administered by a minority and added that the minority institution, prior to the Constitution, would also get equal protection under Article 30.
The CJI said the court cannot deny minority status to an institution just because it has been established by a parliamentary legislation. He said that various other factors surrounding such establishment and other aspects ought to be taken into account.
The CJI said it is not necessary that the purpose of the minority can be implemented only if the persons of the minority administer the institution. He said it is also not necessary to prove that administration rests with the minority to prove the institution to be a minority institution.
The majority judgment emphasized that the test is whether the institution exudes minority character and operates in the interest of the minority. The detailed judgment will be uploaded later in the day.
Justice Kant, reading out his dissent, said the five-judge bench of the apex court in the Aziz Basha case had correctly decided that AMU was not a minority institution, which has attained finality. He stressed that there is no need to reopen the inquiry into the character of AMU.
Justice Kant criticised the manner in which the case was referred by a three-judge bench to the present seven-judge bench and termed it as a judicial impropriety on the part of the smaller bench and also on the part of the then CJI in accepting the request.
The seven-judge bench decided on a reference that arose from a 2006 verdict of the Allahabad High Court which held that the AMU, established through imperial legislation in 1920, was not a minority institution.
The bench, which also includes justices Sanjiv Khanna, Surya Kant, J B Pardiwala, Dipankar Datta, Manoj Misra and S C Sharma, heard arguments over the course of eight days between January 10 and February 1 this year.
Currently, AMU does not follow any reservation policies of the state. However, it does have an internal reservation policy, where 50% of seats are reserved for students who have studied in its affiliated schools or colleges.
This issue was decided once before by the Supreme Court. In 1967, in the case of S. Azeez Basha v. Union of India, a five-judge Constitution Bench held that AMU was not a minority institution. It referred to the Aligarh Muslim University Act, of 1920, which established the university and held that AMU was neither established nor administered by the Muslim community – a requirement for minority educational institutions under Article 30 (1) of the Constitution.
An amendment to the AMU Act in 1981 stated that the university had been “established by the Muslims of India”. In 2005, the university, claiming minority status, reserved 50% of seats in postgraduate medical courses for Muslim students.
The Allahabad High Court struck down the reservation policy and the 1981 amendment, holding that AMU was not a minority institution. The high court judgment was challenged in the apex court, and in 2019 the case was referred to a seven-judge bench to decide if the verdict in S. Azeez Basha v. Union of India required reconsideration.
