Siddaramaiah govt redefines ‘religious minority’ institutions, scraps quota requirement

On March 16, the Department of Minority Welfare issued an order doing away with the clause requiring educational institutions to admit a fixed percentage of students from minority communities. In its order, the government argued that educational institutions are unable to find enough students from minority religions to comply with the requirement.

Bengaluru: In a major policy decision, the Congress government has decided to scrap the requirement for minority educational institutions to enrol a fixed percentage of students of that particular minority religion for whose welfare they are established. 

This has evoked concerns that non-minority students would outnumber minorities in these institutions, defeating the purpose of granting minority status to them. 

As a state policy, the government required educational institutions seeking the ‘religious minority’ tag to provide a fixed quota for minority students. 

Schools seeking minority tag had to provide a 25% quota for students belonging to that particular minority religion. Institutions offering higher education, technical education and skill development had to admit 50% students belonging to the minority religion they cater to. 

Also, at least two-thirds of the members of the management running the institutions should belong to that minority religion. 

On March 16, the Department of Minority Welfare issued an order doing away with the clause requiring educational institutions to admit a fixed percentage of students from minority communities. This was approved in the Cabinet on March 12. 

In its order, the government argued that educational institutions are unable to find enough students from minority religions to comply with the requirement. 

It was Chief Minister Siddaramaiah’s political secretary Naseer Ahmed, an MLC, who set the ball rolling on this by petitioning the government in December last year to relax the criteria on declaring educational institutions as ‘religious minority institutions’. 

Citing the 2011 Census, the order pointed out that 96.01 lakh, or 16.28%, of the state’s population belonged to minority religions: 78.94 lakh Muslims, 11.43 lakh Christians, 4.4 lakh Jains, 95,000 Buddhists, 28,000 Sikhs and 1,100 Parsis. “Because the population of Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists and Parsis is low, finding the required percentage of students for the declaration of religious minority educational institutions is difficult,” it stated. 

Secretary (Minority Welfare) Manoz Jain said the order is based on the guidelines laid down by the National Commission for Minority Educational Institutions. “It will be applicable to existing and newly-established institutions, except medical colleges,” he said. 

The Constitution guarantees religious and linguistic minority communities to set up and run their own educations institutions. Also, private minority schools are exempt from providing reservations to children from the economically weaker and disadvantaged sections of society under the Right to Education (RTE) Act.

Developmental educationist V P Niranjanaradhya slammed the government’s move.

“This is a clear misuse of Article 30 of the Constitution. The right of minorities to establish and administer educational institutions was provided to them to promote the education of their own communities. The right to ‘administer’ does not include right to maladministration. Abolishing the provision to reserve minimum seats for the children of their communities is a gross violation of the fundamental right,” he said.