CJI: Legislation passed by Parliament cannot supersede fundamental rights

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court ruled that government aid, rules governing infrastructure and faculty requirements, and laws acknowledging the degrees of religious and linguistic minority communities cannot supersede their fundamental constitutional right to establish and run educational institutions under Article 30.

Attorney general R Venkataramani argued that “Article 30 is an enabling provision… In order that an educational institution of a particular character/class could be established by any person, minority or otherwise, the first prerequisite is legal competence/authority to establish that class of institution.” This was the response from a bench made up of Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud, Justices Sanjiv Khanna, Surya Kant, JB Pardiwala, Dipankar Datta, Manoj Misra, Satish Sharma, and Satish Sharma.
The argument’s flaw, according to CJI, is that the Article 30 right is subject to the conditions set out in a legislation passed by Parliament. It makes sense to have enabling legislation as, in order to achieve a national level in education, the minority institution also needs to have the necessary staff and facilities. The’minority’ nature of an institution would remain intact even after it was established by legislative action.”
The court declared that no minority group, or community for that matter, may claim that it would create an institution without the UGC Act or other relevant legislation’ approval.It also said that as very few institutions in today’s society can exist without financial help from the government, no minority institution would lose its denominational identity just because it receives subsidies.
After hearing the comments, Venkataramani clarified that he never intended to imply that legislation passed by Parliament superseded Article 30 rights. “The words, ‘educational institutions of their choice’ cannot be construed by itself conferring an authority to establish any class of institutions regardless of any legal competence to do so,” he said.
“An enabling act must come before, be traceable to, and include the authority to create a certain type of institutions. The decision aspect will be free and unrestricted within the parameters of an enabling legislative framework that may provide the ability to form institutions. This is what Article 30 is all about. Therefore, a minority population was not granted the right to build a university before or after the Constitution,” he said.