Explained: How Supreme Court kicked the can of AMU’s minority status down the road

On his last working day as a Supreme Court judge on Friday, DY Chandrachud delivered an anti-climactic judgment that perhaps best summed up his legacy as chief justice of India: the majority verdict in the Aligarh Muslim University minority status case that he authored struck all the right notes of progressive Constitutional values but failed to effect any material changes.

A seven-judge Constitution bench of the Supreme Court had heard arguments in January and February over whether the Aligarh Muslim University should retain its status as a minority educational institution under Article 30 of the Constitution. This article grants religious and linguistic minority communities the right to establish and administer schools, colleges and universities.

The university was founded in 1875 by Sir Syed Ahmed Khan as the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College.

After a wait of nine months since the bench reserved its judgment, the court did not answer the question about whether the university could actually be considered a minority institution.

Instead, the majority judgment, written by Chandrachud and endorsed by Justices Sanjiv Khanna, JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra, only outlined the legal and interpretative framework needed to assess when an educational institution qualifies for minority status under Article 30(1) of the Constitution.

Scroll had earlier this year reported on the roots of the legal...

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