Educational scholarship based on religion violates constitution: HC

The Gujarat High Court has held that the Central pre-Metric scholarship scheme for students from minority community was violative of provisions of the Constitution of India, that prohibits discrimination on grounds of religion.

A division bench of Justice Bhaskar Bhattacharya and Justice J B Pardiwala further held that government cannot give monetary benefits to any community on religious lines, as conferring any monetary benefit on any community on the ground of religion was in violation of Article 15(1) of the Constitution. "There cannot be scope of conferring monetary benefits based on religion," it observed.

However, the bench refused to act on its decision since a contradictory view was taken by a division of the Gujarat High Court earlier. It referred the issue to a larger bench which would decide if the pre-metric scholarship scheme for students from minority community was violative of the Constitution and whether the High Court can direct a state government to implement the scheme.

 

In 2009, similar issue arose when a former BJP MLA Vijay Patel filed a PIL against the Centre's announcement of 15-point programme for upliftment of minority. Then Chief Justice K S Radhakrishnan and Justice Akil Kureshi rejected the PIL upholding Centre's funding for minorities.

The bench cited this order and observed that since the two benches took contradictory views on the issue, it should be finalized by a larger bench.

The division bench also refused to direct the state to implement the scheme and observed, that to pass any direction to State for implementation of this scheme will be like asking state government to violate the Constitution.

Citing an example of students from families from different religions but belonging to same income group, the bench said, that the scheme can be upheld only if it allows all citizens to avail the same benefits.

The bench was hearing a public interest litigation (PIL) seeking direction for the Narendra Modi government to implement the pre-Metric scholarship scheme for students from minority community in Gujarat.

The Gujarat government had refused to implement the scheme saying that it was discriminatory in nature. The State government had further said that it was providing scholarships to poor students of all community.

During the hearing of the PIL, the Union government had contended that under the scheme in question Centre offers pre-matriculation scholarships for children of five minorities students belonging to Muslim, Christian, Sikh, Buddhist and Parsi communities. It was aimed to encourage parents from minority communities to send their school going children to school, lighten their financial burden on school education and sustain their efforts to support their children to complete school education. The petitioner's counsel Hashim Qureshi had argued that the state government was biased against a particular community, which has resulted in non-participation of the state government in implementing the scheme.