SC questions scholarships on religious lines
Thursday, 06 October 2011 00:30
Abraham Thomas | New Delhi
The UPA Government's ambitious schemes to provide scholarships to
underprivileged religious minority community students have hit a
constitutional bar. The Supreme Court has asked the Centre to explain
why such State-funded benefit should be restricted to only one section
of the people and not extended to every poor student irrespective of
religion.
The court has set a one-month deadline for the Centre to respond after
the schemes were challenged for being violative of the sacred
Constitutional principle — non-discrimination on grounds of religion.
Pune-based social worker Jyotika Wale, in her petition, has questioned
why the poor among the non-minorities should be discriminated against
by the Centre because such a classification would create a divide and
communal discord among the poor communities. The Bombay High Court had
dismissed her petition on June 6 this year.
But the apex Bench of Justices Dalveer Bhandari and Deepak Verma
issued notice on Wale's appeal filed through advocate Aniruddha Rajput
giving Centre four weeks to respond.
Admittedly, out of the 18 per cent minority population in the country,
the bulk is constituted by Muslims (13.4 per cent) and Christians (2
per cent) followed by Sikhs, Buddhists, and Parsis. The petition said
that the scholarship was aimed to benefit only some religious
communities which are prohibited under Article 15(1).
The scheme titled "Merit-cum-Means Scholarships for Minority Students"
launched in 2008 announced pre-Matric and post-Matric scholarships for
families earning Rs 1 lakh per annum and Rs 2.5 lakh per annum
respectively. Subject to availability of funds, the scholarship of Rs
950 per annum for day-scholar and Rs 1,450 per annum for hosteller was
available under the first scheme while for post-matric scheme, Rs
30,000 per annum (hosteller) and Rs 25,000 (day-scholar) was
earmarked.
The Centre defended the scheme based on two documents — Prime
Minister's 15-point programme and the Justice Rajinder Sachar
Committee report on "Social, economic and educational status of the
Muslim community of India". While the second document discussed the
socio-educational backwardness of Muslims and not minorities as a
whole, the PM's 15-point agenda announced in 2006 took a broad view on
enhancing education opportunities among minorities. With no evidence
of backwardness among other minority communities, the petitioner
argued that the benefits would be cornered by Muslims alone.
Before the HC, the Centre projected economics of poverty to justify
the scheme by citing the 11th Five Year Plan guaranteeing inclusive
growth of SC/ST/OBC and minorities.
The scheme, it suggested benefited both the poor and the minorities at
an annual budget of Rs 675 crore, a miniscule of the total spending of
Rs 33,954 crore on school education and Rs 15,402 on higher education
spent annually by the Centre. In addition, the schemes had a 30 per
cent reservation for girls.
The scheme's economic viability coupled with the fact that the
majority still has many scholarships to avail from, the HC approved
the scheme. But in doing so, the petitioner pointed out that the
scheme encouraged backwards to remain backward and for Dalits who
converted to Muslim, Christianity, Sikh or Buddhist faith, it became
an added incentive.
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