Jamia Millia Islamia granted Minority Institution Status

A commission on minority institutions on 22 February 2011 granted minority status to Jamia Millia Islamia. With the grant of the minority status the central university’s secular character will likely undergo a change as it will not have to give reservation to OBCs, Dalits and tribals, and can reserve up to 50% seats for Muslims.

Jamia currently gives 22.5% reservation to SCs/STs, 25% to students from the Jamia school and 3% to the physically handicapped. The move to get minority status for Jamia gathered momentum after the university was asked to implement OBC reservation. Jamia Teachers' Association and Jamia Old Boys' Association had filed the petition in National Commission for Minority Educational Institutions (NCMEI).

The 51-page judgment, given by Justice M S A Siddiqui, Mohinder Singh and Cyriac Thomas specifies that Jamia was founded by Muslims for the benefit of Muslims and since its inception it never lost its identity as a Muslim minority educational institution. It was established that Jamia Millia Islamia is a minority educational institution covered under Article 30(1) of the Constitution with section 2 (G) of the NCMEI Act.

Jamia's case was considered to be Aligarh Muslim University (AMU). The Supreme Court in 1967 had not granted minority status to AMU refusing to acknowledge that that AMU was established by the Muslim community. NCMEI pointed out in this context that Jamia did not owe its very existence to a statute and since its founding in 1920 till the enactment of the Jamia Millia Islamia Act in 1988, Jamia never lost its identity.

In 1987, when Jamia became a central university, the Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs and the HRD ministry had refused to accept the then chancellor, Khurshid Alam Khan’s plea to allow Jamia to particularly promote the educational and cultural advancement of Muslims in India.