New Delhi: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya has questioned the justification of Article 30 of the Indian constitution which gives rights to the minority community to run educational institutions. He said, this article has harmed ‘right to equality’.

In a Twitter post on Thursday afternoon, BJP leader said Article 30 has harmed the constitutional right of equality to Indian citizens as it allows minority community to run their religion based educational institutes. This is wrong as it is not allowed to other religions. India is a secular country. What is the need of Article 30?

Under Article 30 of the Indian Constitution, all minorities shall have the right to establish and administer educational institutions of their choice. The constitution says that it can be based on religion or language.

It further says that the state shall not, in granting aid to educational institutions, discriminate against any educational institution on the ground that it is under the management of a minority, whether based on religion or language.

This is not the first time when the BJP leader has sparked a debate running around minority communities. Earlier this year, Vijayvargiya made controversial remarks when he suspected that there were some Bangladeshis among construction labourers who worked at his house recently.

Their "strange" eating habits aroused suspicion about their nationality, the BJP general secretary had said at a seminar held in January in support of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA). When a new room was being added at his house recently, he found "eating habits" of some of the workers "strange" as "they were eating only 'poha' (flattened rice)", he had said.