A Special Leave Petition (SLP) has been filed in the Supreme Court against the March 22 verdict of the Allahabad High Court, which declared the UP Board of Madarsa Education Act 2004 unconstitutional.
Moved by Anjum Kadari and others, the petition contended that the High Court committed a grave error while passing a judicious order.
The Bench passed the arbitrary order about the issues which were never prayed for by the petitioner. Besides, the High Court did not even consider the positive assistance of the Bar, said the plea, drawn by Advocate Pradeep Kumar Yadav and filed through AOR Sanjeev Malhotra.
On March 22, 2023, the Division Bench of Justice Vivek Chaudhary and Justice Subhash Vidyarthi ruled that a secular state had 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.
The state had the foremost duty to provide education to children which was secular in nature, noted the order, adding that the state cannot discriminate and provide different types of education to children belonging to different religions
Any such action on part of the state would be violative of the principles of secularism, which was part of the basic structure of the Constitution of India. Such an action on part of the state was not only unconstitutional, but highly divisive of the society on religious lines, noted the Bench.
It said that if any Legislative Act of the state was violative of the basic structure of the Constitution, which was one of the core principles of secularism, then, it was bound to be struck down.
The High Court further said that the 2004 Act was violative of the principles of secularism and the Constitution of India, adding that the education being provided under the Madarsa Act was violative of Articles 21 and 21A of the Constitution of India.