Aligarh Muslim University Minority Status : Live Updates From Supreme Court Hearing [Day 2]

CJI : (reading article 30) of their choice... so you can set up and administer educational institutions of their choice, once the choice in setting up an education institution is recognised, the choice is yours as a minority, you have to establish it yourself if you want to get the benefit of article 30, if someone else wants to administer your institution you can challenge that, but to the extent of you want to seed the right of the administration to other others is your choice again. That what you're argument is that you are not compelled at the cost of your minority status to require to administer it yourself 100%

Sibal: therefore I can establish an institution of my choice and administer to the extent that I want. 

Sibal : the question that arises is if the grant of the status or the recognition is not the indicia of establishment, what is the indicia of establishment?

The bench discusses amongst themselves

Sibal refers to article 30 of the Constitution

Sibal : Under article 30 I can set up a school, college , university, now you say I have a right to set up a university but you say if I go to the Statute, UGC an say I am University, I lose my status, its not understandable, the very logic is not understandable 

the SG Tushar Mehta clarifed that the College (MAO) was affiliated with the Allahabad University and before that the Calcutta University.

Sibal : A degree granted by a university is a recognition of that university which allows you employment nothing more, the concept of establishment is de hors that

CJI : but the MAO could have been affiliated with an existing University in which case they could not have granted their own degrees

Sibal : no, that is only the recognition of the university like St Stephens is affiliated with the Delhi University 

Sibal: at that time education was a state subject so it could not be administered by the state

CJI : if you look at entry 63 of the union list it says institutions known to the commencement of this constitution as the BHU, the AMU and DU ...

Sibal : this is because Ambedkar says we must protect the cultural ethos of India 

Sibal : When the republic came into being , these were the two universities, one played the minority and the other majority, they became institutions of national importance. why? because they were set up by the central legislative assembly by the act of the Assembly itself .

Sibal : the genesis of the AMU is based on this movement within the minority community that apart from these 5-6 universities there must a university for ourselves...and imagine Sir Syed, I'm talking of 1870 the patience that the man had that we should not be looking at Muslim education alone we should be looking at secular scientific education, and the kind the subjects taught and the same movement was in the Hindu community, at the same time the Banaras Hindu University also came into being.  

Sibal : when we look back at 1950 when we became a republic , where were these higher educational institutions? there were none. the only 5-6 universities were the University of Calcutta, the University of Lahore, University of Madras, and University of Allahabad.. that's all!

CJI ; Bombay University had jurisdiction over present-day Karnataka, Gujarat and if I am not mistaken parts of Singh as well

Sibal : correct...therefore there were hardly any institutions of higher education, there were only 14% of the 300 million people (in India) was educated  

CJI : Article 30 has been called in the sense an article of faith, lets put ourselves back in the 1949-50 and the idea was to give a sense of confidence to the religious and linguistic minority that they would be safe in the...

Sibal : It is in this context that article 30 is in the constitution.