New Delhi: A seven-judge Constitutional Bench of the Supreme Court is all set to examine the validity of the 1967 verdict by a five-judge SC bench that took away the minority status of Aligarh Muslim University (AMU). In 1967, the apex court scrapped AMU's minority status stating that it was neither established nor administered by Muslim minority. Article 30(1) of the Constitution gives linguistic and religious minorities a fundamental right to establish and administer educational institutions of their choice. These rights are protected by a prohibition against their violation under Article 13.
In Azeez Basha vs. Union of India (1968), the five-judge Constitutional Bench of the Supreme Court held that the expression “establish and administer” used in Article 30(1) was to be read conjunctively that is to say, two requirements have to be fulfilled under Article 30(1), namely, that the institution was established by the community and its administration was vested in the community.
In 1981, a divisional bench of the top court questioned the validity the 1968 Azeez Basha judgment that scraped AMU's minority status and referred the matter to a seven-judge bench. The matter had been pending for nearly 43 years.
A seven-judge bench comprising CJI DY Chandrachud, and Justices Sanjiv Khanna, Surya Kant, J B Pardiwala, Dipankar Datta, Manoj Misra and Satish Sharma will start hearing the proceedings on eight petitions in addition to the referred questions on Tuesday.
AMU has demanded the restoration of its minority status citing historical facts like the conversion of the erstwhile Mohammedan Anglo Oriental College into AMU; the Islamic architecture of the University and the Quranic inscriptions to make a case for minority status in the apex court.
In 2006, the Allahabad High Court scrapped reservations for Muslim students in AMU's Postgraduate courses, on the grounds that it is not a minority university.