Minority status row: AMU sets up committee to prepare response

The Education Ministry has issued another letter to AMU seeking its opinion on the proposed review of the AMU Act of 1920, setting alarm bells ringing. AMU has set up a committee to prepare a response.

Successive letters from the education ministry to Aligarh Muslim University about a proposed review of the law that governs it has raised fears that the government might be looking to withdraw special powers from the institution because of its minority background, The Telegraph reported. 

Last November, the ministry wrote to AMU, Banaras Hindu University and Delhi University seeking their opinions on a proposal for a "review of pre-Independence University Acts". DU is learnt to have consented to a review of the DU Act of 1922 while BHU has established a committee to prepare its response to the suggested review of the BHU Act of 1915. 

In November 2022, AMU had sent its response disagreeing with the idea of a review of the AMU Act of 1920. But the ministry issued another letter this month seeking the university’s opinion again on the proposed review, setting alarm bells ringing. AMU has set up a committee to prepare a response. 

Some AMU teachers and alumni expressed fear that the proposed review was meant to withdraw AMU’s special powers through the legislative route at a time the government has opposed the continuance of the university’s minority status in a case being heard in the Supreme Court. 

In 2016, then social justice minister Thaawar Chand Gehlot had demanded that AMU and the Jamia Millia Islamia be stripped of their minority status so they could be made to follow the government’s reservation policy in admissions.  

In its reply to the ministry in November, AMU had underscored that the AMU Act had been amended from time to time according to the needs of the times. It had added that the institution’s minority character was pending before the courts, and the act contained no redundant provisions to be amended now. 

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