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Shortly after the Supreme Court of India of India overruled its 1967 verdict on the minority status of Aligarh Muslim University, AIMIM chief and Lok Sabha MP Assaduddin Owaisi hailed the decision on Friday, saying that the right of minorities to educate themselves has been upheld.
"It is an important day for Muslims of India. The 1967 judgement had rejected minority status of #AMU when in fact it was. Article 30 states that minorities have the right to establish and administer their educational institutions in a manner that they deem fit," Owaisi said in a post on X. He congratulated the students and faculty of AMU, and said that the arguments made by the Bharatiya Janata Party-led union government were rejected in the court. "The right of minorities to educate themselves has been upheld. I congratulate all students and faculty of AMU today. It does not matter if the University was established before the Constitution, or if it was set up by a law of the govt. It is a minority institution if it was established by minorities. All the arguments of the BJP were rejected," the post added. The SC overruled by 4:3 majority the S Azeez Basha versus Union of India case which in 1967 held that since the Aligarh Muslim Univeristy was a Central university, it cannot be considered a minority institution. The majority verdict said the issue of AMU minority status is to be decided by a regular three-judge bench. The bench said that in order to determine whether an institution is a minority institution, what needs to be looked at is who established the institution. Owaisi further implored that after this judgement, the BJP should go for "course correction" He added, "The BJP has opposed minority status for AMU for all these years. What is it going to do now? It has made every effort to attack AMU and Jamia, and our right to even run madrasas." He said that the PM Modi led central government should "stop discriminating" against AMU, mentioning that as Jamia gets Rs 3 lakh per student, AMU gets 3.9 lakh, the Banaras Hindu University gets Rs 6.16 lakh per student. He said in the post, "The Modi govt should take this judgement in its stride. It should support AMU as it is also a central university. Jamia gets Rs3L per student, AMU gets Rs3.9L per student, but BHU gets Rs6.15L. Jamia and AMU have consistently performed well in national rankings. With the right support the Universities could be globally renowned. But for that, Modi must stop discriminating against them." (ANI)
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