A minority institution cannot reserve seats for students of its own community in violation of Article 29(2) of the Constitution, which prohibits discrimination in admission on grounds of religion, race, caste, language, or any of them.

( 1 ) DOES the right to establish and administer a minority institution of their choice guaranteed under Art. 30 (1) of the Constitution extends to or includes the right to reserve seats for the students of minority community in a State financed or aided institution is the issue of some importance due to paucity of any judicial precedent on this aspect which has been described by American jurists as reverse discrimination. The issue has arisen as many students who appeared in the entrance test held for admission to B. Tech. and B. Sc. (Agr.) by Allahabad Agricultural Institute a premier and renowned institute of the country imparting education in agricultural science founded by an American Christian Philanthropist, Dr. Sam Higginbottom, as far back as 1911, were denied admission even though they secured high percentage of marks in the competitive test held by the Institute due to admission policy of reserving 50% seats, for, Bchurch sponsored students from the whole of country of which at least 1/5th shall be from Uttar Pradesh 40% of U. P. Domiciled including Church sponsored coming on merits, 5% Bfrom other States including foreign students but excluding Uttar Pradesh and Church sponsored and 5% for "tribals". Although the scope and ambit of educational right guaranteed to a citizen under Art. 29 (2) and the right of religious or linguistic minority to establish and administer educational institution of their choice under Art. 30 (1) has been explained in various decisions of the Honble Supreme Court but there is direct decision on the issue if a minority institution is entitled to reserve seats for students of its own community in the purported exercise of power to administer an institution of its own choice.

( 2 ) FOR convenience the two sub-articles are reproduced below :"art. 29 (2) : No citizen shall be denied admission into any educational institution maintained by the State or receiving aid out of State funds on grounds only of religion, race, caste, language or any of them. ""art. 30 (1) : All minorities, whether based on religion or language, shall have the right to establish and administer educational institute of their choice. "historically Art. 29 (2) as recommended by the Minority sub-committee and approved by the Advisory committee proposed a provision which read as under :"no minority, whether of religion community or language, shall be deprived of its rights or discriminated against in regard to the admission into State Educational Institute-"since such a provision coupled with Art. 30 (1) would have given rise to apprehension as was argued and it would have resulted in destroying the secular character of the educational institution which are temples of learning consequently despite Arts. 14 and 15 which guarantees equality, Art. 29 (2), as it stands, was incorporated to obviate any misgiving as an exception to Art. 30 (1 ). Its scope was explained in the very first decision which came up before Honble Supreme Court in State of Madras v. Smt. Champakam Dorairajan, AIR 1951 SC 226 and what was described as communal Government order reserving seats in Medical College on basis of caste was held to be violative of Art. 29 (2 ). It was held "the right to get admission into any educational institution of the (sic) to mentioned in Cl. (2) is a right which an individual citizen has (as) a citizen and not as a member of any community or class of citizens. This right is not to be denied to the citizen on grounds only of religion race, caste, language or any of them. If a citizen who seeks admission into any such educational institution has not the requisite academic qualifications and is denied admission on that ground, he certainly cannot be heard to complain of an infraction of his fundamental right under this Article. But, on the other hand, if he has the academic qualifications but is refused admission only on grounds of religion, race, caste, language or any of them, then there is a clear breach of