The three-judge bench of the Supreme Court (SC), led by Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud had promptly stayed the Allahabad High Court’s March 22 ruling and has now overruled it. The verdict in Anjum Qadri and Anr vs Union of India & Ors upholds the constitutionality of the UP Madarsa Act, 2004. It has given a tremendous sense of relief to thousands of madarsas and lakhs of students studying in these institutions. The Government did defend the Act as a regulatory measure but the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR), as intervenor, opposed the petitions and argued that education imparted in madarsas is not of the desired quality and thus, the law violates Article 21A and the right to a mainstream education.
The SC did not agree with the High Court’s decision to strike down the Madarsa Act based on secularism as part of the Basic Structure. Citing its Indira Nehru Gandhi judgment (1975), the SC categorically held that the doctrine of Basic Structure should be invoked to examine the validity of a constitutional amendment, not an ordinary piece of legislation like the UP Madarsa Act. Then Chief Justice A N Ray had observed that “applying the Basic Structure doctrine to test the validity of a statute will amount to ‘rewriting the Constitution’.” The current judgment authored by CJI Chandrachud held that in testing an ordinary law, courts should look just at legislative competence and consistency with fundamental rights. The judgment, accordingly, observed that an ordinary law cannot be declared unconstitutional for violating the basic structure of the Constitution because concepts such as democracy, federalism and secularism are undefined, and permitting courts to strike down legislation for their violation of such concepts will introduce an element of uncertainty in our constitutional adjudication.
Since the Madarsa Act was struck down in the name of secularism, the judgment discussed the........