Once a minority institute, always a minority institute: Calcutta HC
Times of India | 7 March 2025
Kolkata: A school once listed as a minority institution would continue to enjoy minority status, whether or not it obtained a minority certificate from West Bengal Minorities Commission, Calcutta High Court said on Thursday.
"Once a minority, always a minority," Chief Justice T S Sivagnanam said, dismissing a PIL filed in 2019, pleading that schools run by West Bengal Association of Christian Schools could not claim minority status because the association had not applied to the commission for renewal of minority status.
Citing a Supreme Court judgment (in the N Ahmed versus Management of MJ High School, 1988), among others, the CJ observed: "It is evidently clear that the petitioner is unaware of the several Supreme Court judgments in regard to interpretations of Article 30(1) of the Constitution."
The judge then pointed to the 1988 Supreme Court judgment, which ruled that "a school which is otherwise a minority school would continue to be so. The declaration (by the state) is only an acceptance of a legal character antecedent to the said declaration."
The CJ, while hearing the petition, recollected his experience as a judge when the state of Tamil Nadu decided that minority schools had to renew on a yearly basis their minority certificate.
"The settled legal position is that you can't insist on a listed minority body to go to govt and apply for a minority certificate. Rule 33 of the Management Rules, 1969, provides that such schools may apply for a certificate," the CJ said.
The CJ, taking note that Rule 33 of the Management Rules, 1969, was omitted in 2008, observed: "The omission of Rule 33 will not in any manner affect the right of the West Bengal Association of Christian Schools. State govt made special rules for the minority-run private institutions conferred to them under Article 26 and 30 of the Constitution."
Counsel for the respondent schools pleaded that the Christian schools had been set up and administered since 1800. The counsel submitted that they were listed as minority institutions years before West Bengal Minorities Commission came into being. "Now the petitioner says that I can't enjoy the minority status because I didn't obtain a certificate from the commission," the counsel said.
The division bench of CJ Sivagnanam and Justice Chaitali Chatterjee (Das) expressed "serious doubt" about the bonafides of the petitioner. "The petitioner has annexed several internal documents of the schools and prepared a petition running nearly 170 pages without mentioning the source from where he accessed those materials," the CJ observed.
Counsel for the petitioner submitted that there were quite a few petitions against the schools pending before the high court that were available online. "It is easy to access those documents," the counsel said.
The division bench took exception to such a submission. The bench in its order stated that the court would have imposed exemplary costs on the petitioner but did not do so because the petitioner was a social worker engaged in imparting education to the poor and downtrodden in rural areas.
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