JUDGMENT

CHINNAPPA REDDY, J.:— A brazen and bizarre exploitation of the naive and foolish, eager and ready-to-be-duped, aspirants for admission to professional collegiate courses, behind the smoke screen of the right of the minorities to establish and administer educational institutions of their choice is what this case is about. A society styling itself as the Andhra Pradesh Christian Medical Educational Society was registered on August 31, 1984. The first of the objectives mentioned in the memorandum of association of the society was, "to establish, manage and maintain educational and other institutions and impart education and training at all stages, primary, secondary, collegiate, Post-graduate and doctoral, as a Christian Minorities Educational Institution" Another object was "to promote, establish, manage and maintain Medical Colleges, Engineering colleges, Pharmacy colleges, Commerce, Literature, Arts and sciences and Management colleges and colleges in other subjects and to promote allied activities for diffusion of useful knowledge and training." Other objects were also mentioned in the Memorandum of Association. All that is necessary to mention here is that none of the objects, apart from the first extracted object, had anything to do with any minority. Even the first mentioned object did not specify or elucidate what was meant by the statement that education and training at all stages was proposed to be imparted in the institutions of that society "as Christian Minorities Educational Institutions. Apparently the words "as a Christian minorities educational institutions" were added in order to enable the society to claim the rights guaranteed by Art. 30(1) of the Constitution and for no other purpose. This will become clearer and clearer as we narrate further facts.

2. It is also worthy of note that neither the memorandum of association nor the articles of association make any reference to any amount of corpus with which the society and. the institutions proposed to be founded by it were to be financed initially. It was admitted before us in answer to a question by us to the learned counsel for the appellant-society that the society had no funds of its own apart from what was collected from the students.

3. On August 27, 1984, one Professor C. A. Adams who was one of the signatories to the memorandum of association of the society, claiming also to be the President of a self-styled National Congress of Indian Christian addressed a letter to Smt. Indira Gandhi, late Prime Minister of India, requesting that the Central Government may grant them permission to establish a Central Christian University of India in Andhra Pradesh, where Christian children would be provided with facilities for education in arts, sciences, engineering and technological courses, medicine, law and theological courses. The Petitions officer attached to the Prime Ministers office informed Prof. Adams that his letter had been forwarded to the Ministry 1492 of Education and Culture for further action On September 20, 1984, the Deputy Secretary to the Government of India, Ministry of Education and Culture wrote to the president, National Congress of Indian Christians to the effect that universities could only be established under Acts of Parliament or of State Legislatures and there was, therefore, no question of giving permission to any organisation to establish a university. However, it was pointed out that it was open to private organisations to establish colleges of higher education which could seek affiliations to the universities in whose jurisdiction they were established. Such colleges could offer courses leading to university degrees only if they were affiliated to a university. Prof. Adams then wrote to the Government of India claiming that there was no legal impediment to the grant of permission by the Government to the establishment of a university. It was said that if necessary, the Government could initiate legislation also. In order to a