Government can frame rules regarding eligibility of the teachers in minority institutions : Bombay HC

A bench of Justice Bhushan Gavai and Justice Colabawalla of the Bombay High court has held that no private, unaided minority institution will appoint a teacher who has not passed the Teachers Eligibility Test, so conducted by the Maharashtra Government. The bench rejected the petition filed by the Azad Education Society against the government's decision of making the test a prerequisite for all the educational institutions including the minorities institutions. The Maharashtra Government had in August 2013 passed a resolution for making the Teachers Eligibility Test a must for all the persons to be appointed as teachers in any private Educational Institution within the State. In pursuance of this resolution, the society had approached the Bombay High court challenging the government's decision as being unconstitutional. Senior Advocate Atul Damle, representing the petitioners in the case, argued that the said resolution is violative of Article 30 of the Constitution. According to Article 30, all the minority educational institutions have the right to administer and establish their institutions according to their choice. Advocate Damle argued that by this move government is interfering with the right of the minorities so provided under Article 30. In response to this, the government said that the resolution is only to bring a uniformity in the eligibility criteria of the teachers appointed in such institutions and it is not interfering with their rights to administer and run the institutions as per their choice. The petitioner also stated that the said resolution is issued under the provisions of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 and this Act is not applicable to the unaided minority institutions and hence the minority institutions should be exempted from the government's resolution. However, the court rejected the petitioner's contentions and upheld the constitutional validity of the resolution. The court said that the government is empowered to frame rules regarding the minimum eligibility criteria for the appointment of teachers in the minority educational institutions.