The Allahabad High Court delivered a significant ruling, declaring the ‘UP Board of Madarsa Education Act 2004’ as unconstitutional due to its violation of the principle of Secularism.
A detailed judgment is awaited on this matter. Justices Vivek Chaudhary and Subhash Vidyarthi, constituting the Division, pronounced the law as Ultra Vires and directed the Uttar Pradesh Government to devise a scheme to integrate students currently enrolled in Madrasas into the formal education system.
A division bench raised concerns in December 2023 about potential instances of arbitrary decision-making and the need for transparency in the administration of such educational institutions.
Under the act, madrasas function under the state minority welfare ministry. So a question arises if it is arbitrary for providing the madrasa education to be run under the minority welfare department, and all the other education institutions including those belonging to other minority communities like Jains, Sikhs, Christians, etc, are run under the education ministry.
However, the order of the new court arrived months after the state government decided to survey the Islamic education institutions in Uttar Pradesh.
In October 2023, it also formed a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to investigate the funding of Madarsas from abroad.
The SIT team in its report recommended action against more than 8,000 madrasas and alleged that around 80 madrasas in border regions had received foreign funding totaling around ₹100 crores.
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