Aligarh Muslim University vs Naresh Agarwal & Ors.
Background
AMU was established in 1875 as the Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental College and later incorporated as a university by an act of the central legislature in 1920. In S. Azeez Basha v. Union of India (1968), a five-judge bench had held that AMU was not a "minority educational institution" under Article 30(1) because it was established by a statute of the legislature, not "established" by the Muslim minority in the constitutional sense. Decades of litigation followed over amendments restoring AMU's minority character, and the correctness of Azeez Basha was eventually referred to a larger seven-judge bench.
Decision Breakdown
The majority (4 judges) overruled the key premise of Azeez Basha: that an institution cannot be a minority institution merely because it derives its legal character from a statute or was later incorporated by law. The Court held that Article 30(1) protects both religious and linguistic minorities against discrimination and gives them a positive right to establish and administer institutions of their choice, and that this right also extends to universities established before the Constitution came into force. It laid down a fresh test: courts must look at who actually conceived, funded, and implemented the idea for the institution, and whether its administrative set-up affirms its minority character and purpose, rather than treating statutory incorporation as automatically extinguishing minority origin. The Court did not itself decide whether AMU meets this test. It sent that specific factual question back to a regular bench to decide applying the new principles. Surya Kant, J. and Satish Chandra Sharma, J. wrote separate opinions, and Dipankar Datta, J. dissented.
Lesson Learnt
A minority community's right to run its own educational institutions under Article 30(1) does not automatically vanish just because that institution was later given legal existence through an Act of Parliament or a state legislature: what matters is the real history of who founded it and for whose benefit, not just its current statutory form.