The fundamental freedom of minority institutions to establish and administer educational institutions under Article 30(1) of the Constitution is absolute and not subject to reasonable restrictions. Any regulation imposed on minority institutions must be reasonable and conducive to the improvement of the quality of education imparted.

JUDGMENT - KANIA M.H., J.: - This is an appeal directed against the order of Pendse, J., dated 14th September, 1983 summarily rejecting the Writ Petition No. 2070 of 1983 filed by the appellant. We propose to refer to the parties by their description in the original petition.

2. The facts necessary for appreciating the controversy raised before us can be shortly stated. The petitioner is a student who passed the Xth standard of the Secondary School Certificate (S.S.C.) Examination Board, Pune, in June, 1983. He obtained 367 marks out of 700 and the percentage of marks obtained by him comes to about 52 per cent of the total marks. The petitioner belongs to a Scheduled Tribe of Muslim known as “Tadvi”. He applied to respondent No. 1 institution for admission basing his claim on a Government Resolution dated 9th June, 1982, a copy of which is at Exhibit 'B' to the petition. His application for admission was rejected, and he was not granted admission. The reason for which he was not granted admission was that the percentage of marks secured by him was only 52 per cent whereas the last student admitted by respondent No. 1 from the academic stream had obtained 74 per cent marks. It is common ground that respondent No. 1 is a minority educational polytechnical institution administered by Anjuman-I-Islam as the sole trustee. It appears from the affidavit filed by respondent No. 1, and there is no controversy regarding this, that respondent No. 1 reserved 25 per cent of the seats for what they called the technical stream comprising students who had taken technical subjects in the S.S.C. Examination and 75 per cent of the seats were reserved for the academic stream which comprised students who had taken non-technical subjects in the S.S.C. Examination. The last student admitted, as far as technical stream was concerned had secured 64 per cent marks and the last student admitted from the academic stream had secured 74 per cent marks in the S.S.C. Board Examination, the results of which were declared in June, 1983. It is again common ground that the petitioner comes from the academic stream. It is thus the admitted position that if admissions are to be governed purely by the number of marks secured, the petitioner would not be entitled to admission. The claim of the petitioner is, however, based on the aforesaid Resolution of 9th June, 1982.

3. As far as the aforesaid resolution is concerned, the Government by that Resolution directed that the rules in the annexure to this resolution should be unanimously applied for admission to Government as also non-Government polytechnics in Engineering and allied technical subjects in the State from the year 1982-83. The respondent No. 1 is admittedly a polytechnic of the aforesaid type. Rule 4 contained in the annexure prescribes reservation of a certain percentage of seats for Backward Classes. The percentage of these reserved seat comes to 34 per cent of the total seats. The percentage of seats reserved for Scheduled Tribes is 7 per cent and it is again common ground that if 7 per cent of students belonging to Scheduled Tribes have to be admitted, the petitioner would be entitled to admission. The question, therefore, clearly is whether this resolution can be made applicable to respondent No. 1, which is a minority institution.

4. The contention of Mr. Korde, learned Counsel for respondent No. 1, is that it has been clearly held by the Supreme Court that a resolution of this type reserving certain seats for Backward Classes in respect of admission to an educational institution cannot be enforced against minority institutions as it would offend the rights granted to minorities under Article 30(1) of the Constitution of India. The contention of Mr. Kankaria and Mr. Shankaranarayanan who supported the case of the petitioner, is that the right under Article 30(1) is a limited right and the restrictions imposed by Rule 4 referred to earlier are reasonable restrictions which could be legitimately imposed

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