Plea in SC against Assam law on converting state-funded madrassas to government schools

A plea has been filed in the Supreme Court questioning the Gauhati High Court order, which upheld the validity of a law passed by the Assam government converting provincialised Madrassas in the state to regular government schools.

Assam residents Md Imad Uddin Barbhuiya and 12 others, through advocate Adeel Ahmed said the repealing Act of 2020 takes away property coupled with statutory recognition of Madrassa education.

By the order issued on February 12, 2021, the Governor disbands the ‘Assam State Madrasa Board’ created in 1954. It amounts to an arbitrary exercise of both legislative and executive powers and amounts to a denial of the Madrassas’ ability to continue as the centres for providing religious instruction and education, their plea said.

"An encroachment into the proprietary rights of the Madrassas without payment of adequate compensation is a direct infraction of Article 30(1A) of the Constitution," it claimed.

Besides, they have abrogated the right of the Madrassas under Article 30(1) to ‘establish’ and ‘administer’ educational institutions of their choice inclusive of the right to decide their own curriculum which may also be based on their perception of ways to preserve their religion or culture, it added.

The Assam Repealing Act, 2020 rescinded Assam Madrassa Education (Provincialisation) Act,1995 and the Assam Madrassa Education (Provincialisation of Services of Teachers and Reorganisation of Educational Institutions) Act, 2018.

The petitioners claimed the High Court judgment of February 4, 2022, would cause discontinuation of the madrassas and would prevent them from admitting students for the old courses for this academic year, even though they are minority educational institutions created by a religious minority for the purposes of imparting religious instruction as well as other categories of education to the people of India, within Assam.

The High Court had dismissed the petition against the state government's decision after observing that the Madrassas being government schools wholly maintained by the State through provincialisation are hit by Article 28(1) of the Constitution and as such, cannot be permitted to impart religious instruction.