Petition in Supreme Court challenges Allahabad High Court verdict declaring UP Board of Madarsa Education Act unconstitutional

New Delhi, March 30

Barely a week after the Allahabad High Court declared unconstitutional the UP Board of Madarsa Education Act, 2004, a petition has been filed in the Supreme Court challenging its validity.

Filed by Anjum Kadari and others, the special leave petition contended that the high court committed a grave error as it did not consider positive assistance of the Bar and passed an arbitrary order on issues never prayed for by the petitioner before it.

The Allahabad High Court had on March 22, 2023, declared the ‘UP Board of Madarsa Education Act 2004’ as unconstitutional, being violative of Articles 21 (right to life and liberty) and 21A (right to free and compulsory education for children between 6 and 14 years) of the Constitution of India.

The high court had held that a secular state has no power to create a board for religious education or to establish a board for school education only for a particular religion and create separate education systems for separate religions.

Noting that the ‘State’ has the foremost duty of providing secular education to children, the high court had ruled that it cannot discriminate and provide different types of education to children belonging to different religions, it would violate principles of secularism—which is part of the basic structure of the Constitution.

The high court had said, “Since providing education is one of the primary duties of the State, it is bound to remain secular while exercising its powers in the said field. It cannot provide for education of a particular religion, its instructions, prescriptions and philosophies or create separate education systems for separate religions.

Any such action on the part of the State would be violative of the principles of secularism, which is part of the basic structure of the Constitution of India. Such an action on the part of the State is not only unconstitutional but also highly divisive of the society on religious lines,” it had noted.