The education wing of the RSS, the Bhartiya Shiksha Mandal (BSM), is planning to file a review petition in the Supreme Court asking it to reconsider the definition of minority institutions. According to the BSM, the management of minority institutions is “misusing” its “privileges” and also shying away from the implementation of the Right to Education (RTE) Act and other education-related welfare schemes of the government.
The main contention of the BSM does not rest with this. It has also alleged that these institutions have more general students than those belonging to the minority the institution is being run for; while it is only the management that is comprised of minority members, demanding a redefinition of minority institutions that will emphasize the composition of students and not that of the management as the main criterion of this constitutional status.
“The purpose of giving privileges to minority institutions was to help the students belonging to minority communities,” this purpong secretary Mukul Kantikar.
Kantikar also went on to add, “the beneficiary should be minority. Just because the management is minority, you cannot have minority status”.
The procedure in use for admitting students to government-aided minority educational institutions is dependent on a calculation of the percentage of students belonging to the given minority community in the given area, by state governments. The 2002 Supreme court order makes way for the provision to admit students belonging to other communities in these institutions for want of enough minority students.
It is Article 30(1) of the Indian Constitution that gives minority communities the right to establish and administer their own educational institutions.
The BSM, after having prepared a draft of the National Education Policy, is now contemplating on either intervening as a stakeholder or filing a petition in the aforementioned matter. “The definition of minority status should be reviewed, for which there should either be a Supreme Court intervention or a constitutional amendment. We want to explore both the possibilities”, Kantikar added.
Source: http://www.tehelka.com/rss-education-wing-demands-new-norm-for-minority-institutions/
