SC refers to 7-judge bench issue of determining correctness of minority status to AMU

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Tuesday referred the controversial issue of whether Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) was a minority institution to a seven-judge bench.

A three-judge bench, led by CJI Ranjan Gogoi, has decided to refer the issue to a larger bench after hearing preliminary arguments from the varsity, which has said its minority status cannot be changed every time government changes or the political party in power changes.

Before deciding on minority status, the seven-judge bench is likely to consider earlier court rulings and a UPA-era amendment, which formally gave the university a minority tag. It was challenged in the Allahabad High Court that ruled against the university.


Senior advocate Rajeev Dhavan, arguing for the AMU, said the state cannot keep changing its stand with every change in government.

He said there were two parallel threads of rulings and laws — one said that a varsity could be a minority institution and the other that it could not be. He also pointed out another anomaly in the law — deemed universities could carry the minority tag, but not other central universities. He urged the court to reconsider a 1968 ruling in the Aziz Basha case. The bench then referred the case to a seven-judge bench.

The UPA government had brought in an amendment in 1981 granting minority status to the university after the Basha judgment. An Allahabad High Court single-judge bench upheld it, but a division bench had then ruled against the institution. The UPA government and the AMU had challenged this in the SC, which stayed the HC ruling.