‘If univs can exist for tribals or women, why not for Muslims?’

New Delhi: During spirited arguments from AMU which sought reconsideration of Supreme Court’s Azeez Basha judgment of 1967 declaring it to be a non-minority institution, attorney general R Venkataramani provided a brief light moment, while defending the 67-year-old ruling, by inadvertently referring to the judgment as ‘Ashish Basha’, reports Dhananjay Mahapatra.This conversion of ‘Azeez’ into ‘Ashish’ by the AG escaped the attention of mercurial senior advocate Rajeev Dhavan, who representing AMU was seen repeatedly interrupting solicitor general Tushar Mehta. When Dhavan was arguing for AMU, interruptions by Mehta used to invite the former’s wrath. Dhavan’s pet dialogue was “the new practice in SC is to interrupt a lawyer even during proceedings before a seven-judge constitution bench”.Arguing for AMU’s minority status, advocate M R Shamshad said the Basha judgment adopted an exclusionary approach and denied minority status to AMU just because it agreed for government recognition of its degrees through the AMU Act, 1920, and received financial aid from government.“Even in context of a university, governments have established universities for different groups like tribals, women, depressed and backward classes etc. If that is so, why not a university for Muslims?” he asked.The AG explained the meaning of ‘establish’ and ‘administer’ in context of the right conferred on minority communities relating to ‘choice’ of educational institutions. “Unfettered freedom to establish educational institutions ‘of their choice’ does not extend to the grant of exemption from the obligation to abide by other constitutional demands and requirements, for example, the obligation to honour provisions relating to reservations, or matters relating to regulations of appointments of teaching and non-teaching staff and including general regulations relating to standards and quality of education,” Venkataramani said.“The choice aspect of institutions does not exempt the minority from constitutionally sanctioned regulations or constitutional prescriptions which are themselves as important as the choice. As long as the state does not impinge on the choice and which the state cannot, Article 30 is intact,” he added.“After coming into force of the Constitution, a minority community can claim protection under Article 30, it must first have legal competence to establish a particular class of institutions,” the AG said.