SLP Moved In Supreme Court Challenging Allahabad HC's Verdict Declaring 'UP Madarsa Act' As Unconstitutional

A Special Leave Petition (SLP) has been moved in the Supreme Court challenging the Allahabad High Court's March 22 verdict declaring the 'UP Board of Madarsa Education Act 2004' as UNCONSTITUTIONAL. The petition, moved by Anjum Kadari and others, states that the High Court committed a grave error while passing a judicious order and it did not consider positive assistance of the Bar and passed an arbitrary order in its way about the issues which were never prayed by the petitioner before High Court. The petition has been drawn by Advocate Pradeep Kumar Yadav and filed through AOR Sanjeev Malhotra.It may be noted that the High Court, in its March 22, 2023 order, 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 philosophy associated with it.Emphasizing that the State has the foremost duty to provide education to children which is secular in nature, a division bench comprising Justice Vivek Chaudhary and Justice Subhash Vidyarthi categorically held that the state cannot discriminate and provide different types of education to children belonging to different religions.“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,” the Court had remarked.In this regard, the Court had also added that if any legislative Act of the State is violative of the basic structure of the Constitution, which is one of the core principles of which is secularism, then, it is bound to be struck down.With this, the Court had found the 2004 Act to be violative of the principles of secularism and the Constitution of India. The Court also inferred that the education being provided under the Madarsa Act is violative of Articles 21 and 21A of the Constitution of India.

SLP Moved In Supreme Court Challenging Allahabad HC's Verdict Declaring 'UP Madarsa Act' As Unconstitutional

Sparsh Upadhyay

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