Aligarh Muslim University is entitled to minority status, rules Supreme Court overruling 1967 judgement

The judgement was passed by a seven-judge bench led by Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud in 4-3 majority.

The court has overturned its own 1967 judgement which became the basis of granting minority status to AMU.

The top court said a separate three-judge bench will decide the minority status of AMU afresh.

The Centre had maintained that AMU, like the Banaras Hindu University, is an institution of national character, adding that no such university can be a minority institution.

"Owing to the secular ethos and nature of the nation and the Constitution, because AMU is an institution of educational ‘national character’, it cannot be considered to be a minority institution irrespective of the question whether it was established and administered by the minority at the time of inception or not," Solicitor General Tushar Mehta had said in written submissions, adding that no other institution declared to be of national importance by Parliament is a minority institution.

"AMU is not and cannot be a university of any particular religion or religious denomination as any other university, which is declared by the Constitution of India to be of national importance," he had added.

The Supreme Court bench has to resolve the issue of whether an educational institution has minority status under Article 30 of the Constitution and whether a centrally-funded university established by parliamentary statute can be designated as a minority institution.

The bench was hearing a reference arising from the 2006 verdict of the Allahabad High Court which held that AMU was not a minority institution.

After the university was stripped of the minority status, the then Congress-led coalition government at the Centre and AMU had moved an appeal against the high court order.

In 2016, when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was already in power for two years, the Centre told the Supreme Court that it was withdrawing the appeal filed by the previous regime.

One issue that arises in the case is whether a university, established and governed by a statute (AMU Act 1920), can claim minority status.

The correctness of the 1967 judgment of the Supreme Court in S. Azeez Basha vs. Union of India (5-judge bench) which rejected the minority status of AMU and the 1981 amendment to the AMU Act, which accorded minority status to the university.

In its 1967 Basha order, a five-judge bench of the Supreme Court directed AMU was not entitled to the minority status as it "was neither established nor administered by the Muslim minority".

In 1981, the minority status of the university was restored through an amendment to the AMU Act.