AMU Minority Status Case: SC Delivers 4 Separate Verdicts

Aligarh Muslim University

A 7-judge constitution bench of the Supreme Court on Friday has issued 4 separate judgments regarding the minority status of Aligarh Muslim University (AMU).

Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud, who led the bench, noted that the opinions included three dissenting judgments. He announced that the majority verdict was co-authored by himself and Justices Sanjiv Khanna, J.B. Pardiwala, and Manoj Misra, while Justices Surya Kant, Dipankar Datta, and Satish Chandra Sharma dissented.

The Chief Justice stated that the majority opinion has overturned the 1967 ruling in S. Azeez Basha v. Union of India, which previously concluded that AMU did not qualify as a minority institution.

However, the Supreme Court did not explicitly determine whether AMU qualifies as a minority educational institution under Article 30 of the Constitution.

The bench had reserved judgment on whether AMU could be recognized as a minority institution, with the Chief Justice indicating that the reasoning in Azeez Basha, which underpinned the denial of minority status to AMU, has been overruled.

He clarified that a three-judge bench would now reassess AMU’s minority status based on the principles articulated in the majority opinion.

In his reading of the majority judgment, the Chief Justice emphasized that for an institution to be classified as a minority institution, it must be both established and administered by a minority. He asserted that institutions founded through parliamentary legislation should not automatically be denied minority status.

Furthermore, the minority character of an institution should be evaluated based on its operations and alignment with minority interests, not solely on administrative control.

The dissenting opinion presented by Justice Kant argued that the 1967 decision in Azeez Basha had been correctly reached and should remain final. He criticized the referral of the case to the larger bench, calling it a judicial impropriety.

This case stems from a 2006 Allahabad High Court ruling that stated AMU, established in 1920 through imperial legislation, was not a minority institution. The seven-judge bench, which also included Justices Sanjiv Khanna, Surya Kant, J.B. Pardiwala, Dipankar Datta, Manoj Misra, and S.C. Sharma, heard arguments over eight days between January 10 and February 1 this year.

Currently, AMU does not implement state reservation policies, but it maintains an internal policy reserving 50% of seats for students from its affiliated institutions. The Supreme Court had previously ruled on this matter in 1967, concluding that AMU did not meet the criteria for minority status, as it was neither established nor administered by the Muslim community, as required by Article 30(1) of the Constitution.

An amendment to the AMU Act in 1981 claimed that the university was “established by the Muslims of India.” In 2005, the university sought minority status and reserved half of its postgraduate medical seats for Muslim students.

However, the Allahabad High Court invalidated this reservation policy and the 1981 amendment, asserting that AMU was not a minority institution.

This decision was subsequently challenged in the Supreme Court, leading to the referral to the seven-judge bench to reconsider the precedent set in S. Azeez Basha v. Union of India. The detailed majority judgment will be released later today.