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The mere fact that the administration of a minority educational institution is regulated by a statute would not detract from its minority status, the Supreme Court observed Tuesday as it began hearing petitions on the minority status of the Aligarh Muslim University.
“Article 30 (which deals with the right of minorities to establish and administer educational institutions) uses the expression establish and administer. Now, there is no absolute standard of administration that you must administer 100 per cent because 100 per cent will be an illusory standard. So, to make Article 30 effective, we do not have to postulate that the administration by the minority has to be an absolute administration,” Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud, presiding over a seven-judge Constitution bench, observed as Senior Advocate Rajeev Dhavan representing the University made his submissions.
“In that sense today, in a regulated state, nothing is absolute. Virtually every aspect of life is regulated in some way or the other. So, merely because the right to administer is regulated by a statute and, to certain extent is not untrammelled, does not detract from the minority character of the institution,” Chandrachud added.
“That’s the point we were making. That’s the essential point,” Dhavan responded, adding “it can’t be that it will all be Muslim, Muslim, Muslim. It simply cannot be because after the constitution, all the universities have a liberal element in them”.
The CJI pointed out that what is clear is that “you don’t have to be administering only religious courses. You can be administering a purely secular education institute. The law is not that you have to admit only students of your community… And, therefore, a minority institution does not lose that character, according to your submission, because various aspects of its existence are regulated by statute including aspects relating to the administration of the institution.”
He added, “the state in public interest is entitled to regulate, or the state legislature or the Parliament as the case may be,
is entitled to regulate administration in public interest to ensure that the conditions of service of teachers are fair, that the staff of the institution is not maltreated or deprived of basic conditions of service”.
The arguments remained inconclusive and will resume on Wednesday.
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