ARTICLE
30 AND MINORITY RIGHTS - POLITY
News:
SC: Article 30 On
Minority Institutes Not Intended to Ghettoise Communities
What's
in the news?
●
A day after saying the absence of Muslim
majority in the administration of Aligarh Muslim University undercuts its claim
to be a minority educational institution (MEI), Supreme Court attempted to
strike a balance by remarking that the intent of Article 30 of the Constitution
was not to ghettoise minorities by insisting they had the upper hand in
administration of the institution.
Article
30:
●
Article 30(1) guarantees to all linguistic and religious minorities
the ‘right to establish’ and the ‘right to administer’ educational institutions
of their choice.
Objective:
●
To give the minorities a sense of security and a feeling of
confidence not merely guaranteeing the right to profess, practise and
propagate religion to religious minorities and the right to conserve the
language, script and culture to linguistic minorities.
●
The right is conferred by this clause on
two types of minorities - religious and linguistic minorities.
T.M.A.
Pai Foundation v. State of Karnataka:
●
It has been held that since the
reorganization of the States in India has been on linguistic lines, thus for
the purpose of determining the minority”, the unit will be the State and not the whole of India.
●
The insertion of new Entry 25 relating to
‘Education’ in List III the Seventh Schedule by the Constitution (42nd Amendment) Act, 19 enables Parliament to
legislate in relation to “education”, with respect whole of India or group of
States or even with respect to a particular State.
●
It is for the National commission for Minorities to determine the minority status of
a community.
Rights
on Minorities:
Article 30(1) confers two
rights on the minorities such as
●
Right to establish an educational
institution.
●
Right to administer an institution so
established.
Types
of Minority Education Institutions:
●
Unaided
Minority Institutions: Though, the procedure for admission
of students to unaided minority institutions could not be regulated at all by a
State University, but it must be transparent and merit based.
●
Aided
Minority Institutions: The minority educational
institutions receiving Government aid would not lose their minority character,
but they would come under the purview State regulation. Though, it would be
required to admit reasonable extent of non-minority students, that would not
substantially impair the rights under Article 30(1).
Other
Rights:
●
Right to choose Principal
●
Right to take Disciplinary action
●
Right to select students for admission
●
Right to impart religious instruction
Go
back to basics:
Minorities
and Indian Constitution:
●
The
Indian Constitution does not explain ‘minority’.
It does not define the term ‘minority’ anywhere. It gets its meaning from the
statistical data derived by analyzing the percentile between the majority and
minority communities residing in the country.
●
This data is collected by dividing people
based on difference of religion. This data classifies certain religious
minorities. These include people who identify as Muslims, Christians,
Buddhists, Jains, Sikhs, Parsis, and others.