New Delhi, April 1: The Centre has told the Supreme Court that Aligarh Muslim University does not merit minority status, arguing that granting privileges on religious grounds to an institution set up by a legislative act would be "contrary to the country's secular policy".
Allahabad High Court had stripped the university of its minority status in 2006, a verdict the institution has challenged in the Supreme Court.
Recently, the Narendra Modi government reversed the stand of its UPA predecessor and decided not to support minority status for AMU or Jamia Millia Islamia, whose minority status is under challenge in Delhi High Court.
Attorney-general Mukul Rohatgi had vetted the Centre's affidavit, which the apex court is likely to take up for consideration on Monday, sources told The Telegraph .
"We have decided to withdraw the earlier special leave petition moved (by the UPA government) before the apex court," a source involved with the drafting of the affidavit said.
He denied that the March 5 meeting between the Prime Minister and the AMU vice chancellor, Lt Gen. Zameer Uddin Shah, had led to a change in the Centre's stand.
Shah had reminded Modi of the 1977 election manifesto of the Janata Party, into which the Jana Sangh, from which the BJP was later born, had merged.
The manifesto had pledged to work for "a consensus on the restoration of the autonomy and original character of the Aligarh Muslim University, which had been gradually impaired by previous governments".
In 1967, the Supreme Court had ruled that since the Muhammadan Anglo Oriental College, established by the Muslim community, had been converted to Aligarh Muslim University by an act of legislature in 1920, it could not be called a minority institution.
The AMU Act of 1920 had not formally declared the university a minority institution but implied such a status by mandating certain special rights and privileges for its Muslim students.
In 1981, Indira Gandhi's government bypassed the so-called Azeez Basha verdict of 1967 by amending the 1920 act to formally accord minority status to the university. But the 2006 Allahabad High Court judgment set the amendment aside. The UPA government and AMU then challenged the high court judgment.
In 2005, the UPA government had allowed AMU to reserve 50 per cent seats at all levels for Muslims. That order has been kept in abeyance since the matter is before the Supreme Court.
Currently, the university reserves half its undergrad seats for those passing from its own schools, and half its postgraduate seats for its own graduates, irrespective of religion.
The NDA government claims that conferring minority status on any institution set up by a legislative act violates Article 15 of the Constitution, which prohibits discrimination by the State on grounds of religion.
A Union minister recently invoked Dalit and tribal students' interests to defend the Centre's stand at a time the government has been tagged "anti-Dalit" after PhD scholar Rohith Vemula's suicide.
Minority status exempts educational institutions from caste quotas, a privilege that social justice and empowerment minister Thaawar Chand Gehlot described as "discriminatory" in the context of AMU and Jamia.
