(1.) (For self and for Honourable Mr. Justice Vijay Manohar Sahai, Honourable Mr. Justice D. H. Waghela) :- This reference involves the question of validity of Pre-matric Scholarship Scheme ('the Scheme' for short) framed by the Government of India. Such a scheme was formulated as part of Prime Minister's New 15 Point Programme for the welfare of minorities. The Scheme was made effective from 1st April, 2008. Those students who had secured not less than 50 per cent marks in the previous final examination and the annual income of whose parents/guardians from all sources did not exceed Rs. 1 lac were eligible for the scholarship. The scholarship was made available to the students of minorities as notified under section 2(c) of the National Commission for Minorities Act, 1992. 30 per cent of the scholarship was ear-marked for girl students. Since the scholarships that would be made available in a year was fixed, for inter-se selection of all eligible students, weightage was to be given to poverty rather than marks. Funding of the scholarships would be shared by the Central and State Governments in the ratio of 75% as to 25% whereas in case of Union Territories, 100 per cent funding was to be provided by the Central Government.
(2.) THE said scheme came to be challenged before this Court in Special Civil Application No. 2245 of 2008 filed by one Shri Vijay H. Patel in the nature of public interest litigation. The grievance of the petitioner therein was that diverting national resources in favour of minority communities was discriminatory, arbitrary and violative of the constitutional provisions. The Court traced the origin of the Scheme which was framed bearing in mind the findings of the High Level Committee constituted by the Government of India under notification dated 9th March, 2005 headed by Justice Rajender Sachar (popularly known as Sachar Committee Report), which was constituted to prepare a comprehensive report on the socioeconomic and educational status of Muslim community in India. The petition was dismissed holding that the Scheme does not suffer from any constitutional invalidity as the funds used to minimise inequalities among minority communities by adopting various social and welfare activities like public safety, health, slum development, improving the deficiencies in civic amenities, economic opportunities, improving standard of education, skill and entrepreneurship development, employment opportunity, eradication of poverty, etc. would in no way violate the constitutional principles of equality or affect any of the fundamental rights guaranteed to the members of the other communities. For coming to such a conclusion, the Division Bench made following observations :
(3.) BEFORE the said public interest petition could be decided by this Court, another public interest petition being Writ Petition (PIL) No.191 of 2012 came to be filed. Petitioner No. 1 therein belongs to the Scheduled Caste category and petitioner No.2 belongs to Other Backward Class (OBC) category. They have challenged the validity of the Scheme. They have prayed for a declaration that the said Scheme is discriminatory being violative of Article 14 of the Constitution. In the petition, they have pleaded that the members of Scheduled Castes and OBC communities are a disadvantaged lot, despite which the Government of India has not framed any scheme of scholarship for the students of such communities. This, according to them, violates the equality clause enshrined in Article 14 of the Constitution.
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