The Congress has demanded reservation for Dalit, tribal and OBC students at private educational institutions, nearly two decades after a government it led sidestepped the matter despite obtaining a constitutional mandate.

A statement from party communications chief Jairam Ramesh on Monday supported a parliamentary committee’s recommendation for a law to implement social category reservations at private institutions, as provided under Article 15(5) of the Constitution.

It was the UPA-I government that had brought in Article 15(5) through the 93rd constitutional amendment in 2005. The provision enabled the government to provide reservations at all educational institutions, public or private.

In 2006, the UPA government enacted the Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Admission) Act, implementing reservations at public-funded institutions. But it did not bring in any law enforcing reservations at private institutions.

Monday’s Congress statement referred to this omission.

It underlined that the Supreme Court had in 2008 upheld the constitutional validity of the 2006 Act. “Reservation in private unaided institutions left open to be decided in appropriate course,” it added, without elaboration.

Later, in 2014 — the year the UPA lost power — the Supreme Court upheld the validity of Article 15(5) in Pramati Educational and Cultural Trust vs Union of India.

This means that reservations for the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and the Socially and Educationally Backward Classes were constitutionally permissible at private educational institutions too, the Congress statement said.

Earlier, in its manifesto for last year’s Lok Sabha elections — a decade after the apex court upheld Article 15(5) — the Congress had pledged to pass legislation to implement reservations at private educational institutions.

Now that the parliamentary standing committee on education has recommended such a law, the Congress reiterates this demand, the statement said. The panel is headed by Congress MP Digvijaya Singh.

Currently, no private educational institution implements social category reservations.

In 2002, the Supreme Court had ruled in the TMA Pai case that a private body’s right to establish educational institutions was a fundamental right, and this included the right to decide admission procedures.

Education law expert Ravi Bhardwaj said Article 15(5) cannot be implemented without a supporting law.

“The Constitution has created an enabling provision. To make it effective, the government should have brought in a bill in Parliament anytime during the last 19 years.
This has not been done,” Bhardwaj said.

N. Sukumar, who teaches political science at Delhi University, said: “The private institutions are going to increase further and will cater to the higher education needs of the majority of students. They should be mandated to follow the reservation policy to ensure that students from the deprived sections get the opportunity to study.”

CUET doubts

The standing committee has sought a review of the current system of admitting undergraduate and postgraduate students to the central universities solely through the Common University Entrance Test (CUET).

It has said a single MCQ-based exam cannot cater to the varying needs of the different universities, implying that the institutions should be allowed to hold their own entrance tests.