On Friday, the Supreme Court is expected to render a decision on the complex legal issue of whether Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) was granted minority status under Article 30 of the Constitution, which gives linguistic and religious minorities the authority to create and run educational institutions. A seven-judge Constitution bench headed by Chief Justice DY Chandrachud will pronounce the verdict.
After eight days of hearing arguments, the bench—which also included Justices Sanjiv Khanna, Surya Kant, JB Pardiwala, Dipankar Datta, Manoj Misra, and Satish Chandra Sharma—reserved its decision on the matter on February 1.
Taking on the unsolvable problem of the AMU’s minority status, the top court ruled on February 1 that the 1981 amendment to the AMU Act, which essentially granted it a minority status, only performed a “half-hearted job” and did not put the institution back in the same position it had before 1951.
The 1951 amendment eliminates mandatory religious education for Muslim students at the university, even though the AMU Act, 1920, discusses the establishment of a teaching and residential Muslim university in Aligarh.
The difficult issue has put Parliament’s legislative expertise and the judiciary’s ability to interpret intricate statutes pertaining to the establishment of Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College in 1875 by well-known members of the Muslim community under the leadership of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan to the test on numerous occasions. It converted into a university under the British Raj in 1920, years later.
“One thing which is worrying us is that the 1981 amendment does not restore the position as it stood prior to 1951. In other words, the 1981 amendment does a half-hearted job,” Justice Chandrachud had said while proceeding to close the arguments. “I can understand if the 1981 amendment had said… okay, we are going back to the original 1920 statute, confer complete minority character on this (institution),” the CJI had said.
The 1981 amendment to the AMU Act was previously rejected by the BJP-led NDA government, which insisted that the court follow the 1967 ruling of the five-judge constitution bench in the S Azeez Basha v. Union of India case. At that time, the Constitution bench ruled that AMU could not be classified as a minority institution because it was a central university.
The highest court had stated that it must determine what the 1981 amendment accomplished and whether it gave the institution its pre-1951 standing back.
Proponents of the institution’s minority identity, such as seasoned attorney Kapil Sibal, said that the university’s legitimacy as a Muslim minority institution is unaffected by the fact that only 37 of the 180-member governing council are Muslim.
Others, such as Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, argued that a university that receives massive funding from the Centre and has been designated as a national institution cannot claim to be affiliated with a certain religion.
Additionally, they had maintained that the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College gave up its minority status after becoming a university following the 1951 revision to the AMU Act and starting to receive funding from the Central government.
According to a lawyer who opposed AMU’s minority status, the central government gave it more than ₹5,000crore between 2019 and 2023—nearly twice as much as the central institution, the institution of Delhi.
Some of them had even argued that prominent members of the Muslim community who had lobbied the British government at the time to establish the institution as a university dedicated to advancing Muslim education did not view themselves as a religious minority in undivided India and supported the two-nation theory.
In a vigorous reaction, Mr. Sibal claimed that the AMU was covered by Article 30 of the Constitution, which addresses the right of linguistic and religious minorities to create and run educational institutions.
Notably, the 1981 law’s clause granting the institution minority status was overturned by the Allahabad High Court. The AMU was among those who appealed the high court’s decision to the Supreme Court.
For the past few decades, the dispute surrounding AMU’s minority status has been enmeshed in a judicial quagmire.
On February 12, 2019, the Supreme Court submitted the controversial matter to a seven-judge panel. In 1981, a such allusion was also made.
The Allahabad High Court’s 2006 ruling invalidating the 1981 modification to the AMU Act was appealed by the Congress-led UPA administration at the federal level. A separate petition against it was also filed by the university.
In 2016, the BJP-led NDA government informed the Supreme Court that it will drop the petition that the UPA administration had filed.
Citing the Supreme Court’s 1967 ruling in the Basha case, it argued that because AMU was a government-funded central university, it was not a minority school.
