Supreme Court delivers verdict on minority status for Aligarh Muslim University: Top quotes

Here are the top quotes from the judgement:

📌 “The word established as used in article 30(1) cannot and should not be understood in a narrow and legalistic sense. The words used in Clause 1 of Article 30 have to be interpreted in view of the object and purpose of the article and the guarantee and protection it confers.”

📌 “The courts must identify the circumstances surrounding the incorporation of the university including through a reading of the statute to identify who established the university. Formalism must give way to actuality and to what is real. The right under article 30(1) is guaranteed to minorities as defined upon the commencement of the constitution.”

📌 “A different right bearing group cannot be identified for institutions established before the adoption of the constitution. To determine who established the institution, the courts must consider the genesis of the educational institution. For this analysis, the courts must trace the origin of the idea for the establishment of the institution.

Aligarh Muslim University campus (Express Photo by Abhinav Saha)

📌 “The proof of ideation must point towards one member of the minority or the group from the community.”

📌 “It is not necessary that the educational institution must have been established only for the benefit of a religious or linguistic minority community. It must predominantly be for its benefit. It is not necessary that education must be provided in the language spoken by the minority or in the religion of the minority.”

📌 “… it is not necessary to prove that administration vests with a minority to prove that it is a minority education institution because the very purpose of article 30(1) is to grant special rights on administration as a consequence of establishment. To do otherwise, would amount to converting the consequence to a precondition.”

📌 “An institution to be a minority institution must satisfy the criteria of being administered as a minority institution on the date of the commencement of the constitution and being a minority institution on the date of formation.”

📌 “Even if an educational institution was established by the minority for the purpose of the community, we must assess the impact of any subsequent events that alter the character of the institution before the commencement of the constitution.”