HRD willing to amend the AMU Act

Students seeking admission in Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) can expect the reservation to remain even in the next academic year despite Allahabad High Court?s order terming it a non-minority institution.

Updated on: Jan 11, 2006, 12:56:00 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Students seeking admission in Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) can expect the reservation to remain even in the next academic year despite Allahabad High Court’s order terming it a non-minority institution.

According to officials at the Human Resource Development (HRD) ministry, the government is willing to amend the AMU Act to insert minority status and reservation for minority community in a bid to nullify the order of Allahabad HC order.

The Act amended in 1981 gave the university minority status but also maintained that admission should not be on basis of religion, caste or creed. HRD issued an order in February last year making 50 per cent reservation for Muslims in PG courses and professional courses.

The HC overruled this order saying that AMU does not have a minority status. Officials say the section for admission can be deleted and new section for allowing reservation for minorities can be inserted.

If required an amendment can be introduced in the budget session of the Parliament, an official added. AMU has reportedly sought an amendment in the central Act and has requested to clear the situation before start of next academic session.

“On receiving the certified copy of the judgement of the HC, we will decide on steps required to find a way to uphold the commitment of Indira Gandhi about AMU being a minority institution,” he said, maintaining that UPA government was committed on giving AMU minority status.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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