'State Has To Treat All Notified Minorities Equally' : Kerala High Court Quashes Scheme Allotting 80% Minority Scholarships To Muslims

Declaring that the orders could not be legally sustainable, Justice Shaji P Chaly, speaking for the Bench of himself and Chief Justice Manikumar directed the State to provide merit-cum-means scholarships to members of notified minority communities equally.

"We hereby direct the State Government to pass requisite and appropriate Government Orders providing merit-cum-means scholarship to the members of the notified minority communities within the state equally, in accordance with the latest population census available with the State Minority Commission", the operative part of the judgment states.

With this, the Court allowed a petition filed by lawyer Justine Pallivathukal. The petition alleged that the State Government was giving undue preference to the Muslim Community over the members of other minority communities in the state.

Facts and submissions

The specific bone of contention was with respect to a scholarship scheme announced by the State Government for students from minority communities. The scheme was announced pursuant to proposals submitted by a 11-member committee. The Committee had been tasked with implementing the recommendations of the Justice Rajinder Sachar committee in Kerala. The Sachar Committee was a high level committee set-up to report on the social, economic, educational status of the Muslim community in India.

As part of the scholarship scheme, the State Government provided 5000 scholarships for degree and post graduate Muslim women students. The benefit of the scheme was, in February 2011, later extended to students belonging to the Latin Catholic and Converted Christian Communities. As per a Government Order in 2015, it was stated that reservation among Muslims and other minority communities would be in the ratio 80:20 (80% for Muslims, 20% for Latin Catholic Christians and other communities).

In the petition, State Government's scheme is contrasted with a scholarship announced by the Union Government in 2006, where scholarships were provided to students belonging to minority communities, on a merit-cum-means basis as well. Nowhere was it stated that scholarships were provided to any particular minority community in preference to other minority communities, the petitioner asserted in the petition.

"State of Kerala under the guise of promoting the minority communities is showing undue favouritism to Muslim community to the detriment of other minority communities. In the case of Christian community, other than Latin Catholic and converted Christians, no benefit is given to the rest of the group resulting in total discrimination," the petition also read.

With these assertions, the petitioner sought that the discrimination be remedied and the scholarships distributed uniformly to all minority communities. As an alternative prayer, the petitioner sought that the scholarships be distributed in accordance with the ratio of population of each minority community. 

The State argued, based on the Sachar Committee and Kerala Padana Report, that Muslims were behind Christians in college enrollment. There were only 3% landless Christians, while 37.8% of Muslims were landless among Muslims, it was stated. Muslims in Kerala are in toto a backward community while in other religious minorities including Christians, the Roman Catholics and some other sects among Christians are not backward communities, it was contended.

Court's holding

Among other issues discussed, the Court held that there is nothing wrong in the State Government providing facilities to weaker sections of the community, but when it comes to dealing with the notified minorities, "it has to treat them equally".

The judgment states that the government was not vested with any powers to treat them unequally.

"But here is a case where without taking into account the entitlement of the Christian Minority community within the State available from the population ratio, State is indulging in providing scholarship to the Muslim minority community at 80%, which according to us, is an unconstitutional act and unsupported by any law. Mere executive orders issued by the State Government cannot overreach the provisions of the Minority Commissions Acts, 1992 and 2014, and the imperatives contained under the provisions of the Constitution of India discussed above. Article 29 also casts a duty to protect the educational interests of the minority community in equal measure and not in a discriminatory manner."

Describing the allotment as a ration as a 'sub-classifcation', the Court said,

"Therefore, deducing the facts, circumstances and the laws, we are of the considered opinion that the action of the State Government in sub-classifying the minorities by providing merit-cum-means scholarship at 80% to Muslim community and 20% to the Latin Catholic Christians and Converted Christians cannot be legally sustained"

Urging the state to provide merit-cum-means scholarship equally to all notified minorities, the petition was allowed.

CASE: Justine Pallivathukal v. State of Kerala and Ors.

COUNSEL: Senior Advocate Raju Joseph, J Julian Xavier, Firoz K Robin, Roy Joseph, Jose VV, Aanies Mathew, E Haridas for petitioner. State Attorney KV Sohan for the State and Assistant Solicitor General P Vijayakumar for the Centre. Advocates Haris Beeran and OA Nuriya for the additional respondent. 

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