Medium Of Instruction Of School Irrelevant To Discover Whether It Is A Linguistic Minority Institution Or Not: SC [Read Judgment]

The Supreme Court has observed that the medium of instruction, whether it be Hindi, English, Bengali or some other language would be wholly irrelevant to discover as to whether the said school was founded by a linguistic minority for the purpose of imparting education to members of its community.

The bench comprising Justice Rohinton Fali Nariman, Justice R. Subhash Reddy and Justice Surya Kant made this observation in Chandana Das (Malakar) v. State of West Bengal, while answering reference made to it after a division bench delivered split verdict in an appeal against the judgment of Calcutta High Court.

One of the issues in the reference was whether the absence of any order by the competent authority under the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education Act granting minority status to the school (Khalsa Girls High School), the said school cannot claim to be a minority institution for the purpose of Article 30? The bench concluded that authorities set up by the aforesaid Act do not give any power to recognise a minority institution.

Referring to a letter issued on behalf of the school to the educational authority of the State, the bench observed that, it would show that the school was started as a primary school by the Sikh community living in Kolkata to impart education to their children who came from Punjab, so that they may learn their mother tongue and religion, ethics etc. There can be no doubt that qua the State of West Bengal, Sikhs are a linguistic minority vis-à-vis their language, namely, Punjabi, as against the majority language of the State, which is Bengali, the bench observed.

The bench then considered the contention that Article 350B of the Constitution of India would make it clear that the institution must first be declared to be a minority institution before it can avail of the fundamental right under Article 30. Another contention addressed was that, in any case the medium of instruction was Hindi and, therefore, being the national language, the institution could not be said to cater to the needs of the minority community.

The Court noted that this Article 350B only sets up a Special Officer for linguistic minorities, to be appointed by the President, whose duty it is to investigate matters relating to safeguards provided for linguistic minorities and send reports to the President of India, which reports the President shall cause to be laid before each House of Parliament, and send to the Governments of the States concerned. It said:

Even a cursory reading of this Article cannot possibly lead to the conclusion that absent a report by the Special Officer, no linguistic minority can claim protection as such under Article 30(1) of the Constitution.

While rejecting the argument relying on medium of instruction, the bench observed:

What is important is that the fundamental right under Article 30 refers to the "establishment" of the school as a linguistic minority institution which we have seen is very clearly the case, given paragraphs 5(a) and 5(b) of letter dated 19th April, 1976. Therefore, the medium of instruction, whether it be Hindi, English, Bengali or some other language would be wholly irrelevant to discover as to whether the said school was founded by a linguistic minority for the purpose of imparting education to members of its community. 

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