LAWS(SC)-2002-10-89

T M A PAI FOUNDATION Vs. STATE OF KARNATAKA

Decided On October 31, 2002
T M A Pai Foundation Appellant
V/S
STATE OF KARNATAKA Respondents

JUDGEMENT

(1.) INDIA is a land of diversity of different castes, peoples, communities, languages, religions and culture. Although these people enjoy complete political freedom, a vast part of the multitude is illiterate and lives below the poverty line. The single most powerful tool for the upliftment and progress of such diverse communities is education. The State, with its limited resources and slow moving machinery, is unable to fully develop the genuis of the Indian people. Very often the impersonal education that is imparted by the State, devoid of adequate material content that will make the students self-reliant, only succeeds in producing potential pen-pushers, as a result of which sufficient jobs are not available.

(2.) IT is in this scenario where there is a lack of quality education and adequate number of schools and colleges that private educational institutions have been established by educationinsts, philanthropists and religious and linguistic minorities. Their grievance is that the unnecessary and unproductive load on their back in the form of governmental control, by way of rules and regulations, has thwarted the progress of quality education. It is their contention that the Government must get off their back, and that they should be allowed to provide quality education uninterrupted by unnecessary rules and regulations, laid down by the bureaucracy for its own self- importance. The private educational institutions, both aided and unaided, established by minorities and non-minorities, in their desire to break free of the unnecessary shackles put on their functioning as modern educational institutions and seeking to impart quality education for the benefit of the community for whom they were established, and others, have filed the present writ petitions and appeals asserting their right to establish and administer educational institutions of their choice unhampered by Rules and Regulations that unnecessarily impinge upon their autonomy.

(3.) WHEN the hearing of these cases commenced, some questions out of the eleven referred for consideration were reframed. We propose to give answers to these questions after examining the rival contentions on the issues arising therein.