Minority Benefits

Author(s): Babita Jain
Publisher: Shrut Samvardhan Samsthan

Page 49

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The State Government can prescribe percentage of the minority community to be admitted in a minority educational institution taking into account the population and educational needs of the area in which the institution is located. There cannot be a common rule or regulation or order in respect of types of educational institutions from primary to college level and for the entire State fixing the uniform ceiling in the matter of admission of students in minority educational institutions. Thus a balance has to be kept between two objectives - preserving the right of the minorities to admit students of their own community and that of admitting "sprinkling of outsiders” in their institutions subject to the condition that the manner and number of such admissions should not be violative of the minority character of the institution. It is significant to mention here that Section 12C (b) of the Act also empowers the State Government to prescribe percentage governing admissions in a minority educational institution. Thus the State Government has to prescribe percentage governing admissions of students in the minority educational institutions in accordance with the aforesaid principles of law enunciated by their lordships of the Supreme Court in the cases of T.M.A. Pai Foundation and P.A. Inamdar (supra).
The emphatic point in the P.A. Inamdar (Supra) reasoning is that the minority educational institution is primarily for the benefit of minority. Sprinkling of the nonminority students in the student population of minority educational institution is expected to be only peripheral either for generating additional financial source or for cultural courtesy. Thus, a substantive section of student population in minority educational institution should belong to the minority. In the context of commercialisation of education, an enquiry about composition of student population of minority educational institution will reveal whether the substantive peripheral formula that can be gathered from P.A. Inamdar is adequately complied with or whether minority educational institution is only a façade for money making.
It needs to be highlighted that Sec. 2 (f) of the Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Admission) Act, 2006, defines a minority educational institution as under:
"Minority Educational Institution" means an institution established and administered by the minorities under clause (1) of article 30 of the Constitution and so declared by an Act of Parliament or by the Central Government or declared as a minority educational institution under the National Commission for Minority Educational Institutions Act, 2004;
(emphasis supplied) On a reading of Article 30(1) of the Constitution read with several authoritative pronouncements of the Supreme Court and the definitions of Minority Educational Institution in Section 2(g) of the Act and Section 2(f) of the Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Admission) Act, 2006, the following facts should be proved for grant of minority status to an educational institution on religious basis:
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Minority Benitrit