Before deciding on minority status, the seven-judge bench is likely to consider earlier court rulings and a UPA-era amendment, which formally gave the university a minority tag.
Team Clarion
NEW DELHI – The Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) minority status case will come up before a seven-judge Bench of the Supreme Court on January 9. The bench presided by Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud will also comprise Justices Sanjiv Khanna, Surya Kant, J.B. Pardiwala, Dipankar Datta, Manoj Misra and K.V. Viswanathan.
In 2005, the Allahabad High Court had ruled that AMU is not a minority institution. AMU and the then UPA government challenged this before the Supreme Court. In 2016, the NDA government informed the apex court that it is withdrawing the appeal filed by the government.
On February 12, 2019, a three-judge bench presided by the then CJI Ranjan Gogoi referred the matter to a seven-judge bench.
The seven-judge bench is expected to lay down parameters for granting minority status to an educational institution under Article 30 of the Constitution and also decide whether an educational institution created under a parliamentary statute can be given such status.
Before deciding on minority status, the seven-judge bench is likely to consider earlier court rulings and a UPA-era amendment, which formally gave the university a minority tag. It was challenged in the Allahabad High Court that ruled against the university.
Senior advocate Rajeev Dhavan, arguing for the AMU, said the state cannot keep changing its stand with every change in the government. He said there were two parallel threads of rulings and laws — one said that a varsity could be a minority institution and the other that it could not be.
He also pointed out another anomaly in the law — deemed universities could carry the minority tag, but not other central universities.
He urged the court to reconsider a 1968 ruling in the Aziz Basha case. The court then referred the case to a seven-judge bench.