MADRID 5 Nov. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Supreme Court of India has endorsed this Tuesday the legality of madrassas (Islamic schools) after considering that the regulations do not violate the Constitution, as the Allahabad High Court ruled in March, a resolution that was a hard blow for these organizations. .
The court has thus pointed out that the Allahabad court “was wrong” to label as unconstitutional the education law that addresses the functioning of madrassas and which dates back to 2004.
This measure benefits more than 1.7 million students of these schools located in the province of Uttar Pradesh and reverses the verdict of the lower court, which annulled the current law on the grounds that it violates the principles of secularism, according to reported the newspaper ‘The Indian Express’.
The court decision taken at the beginning of the year obliged the Government of Uttar Pradesh to integrate all these students into the formal Indian school system. However, the Supreme Court has now confirmed the validity of this legislation and has ruled that the law in question should not have been annulled for violating the principle of secularism. “The legislative scheme of the Uttar Pradesh Madrasa Education Act sought to standardize the level of education offered by these centres,” he said.
This measure implies that the madrassas will continue to operate in the region and that the State will be the one to regulate educational standards. “The law is intended to protect the rights of a minority in Uttar Pradesh and is consistent with the positive obligation of the State, which guarantees students to pass and earn a decent living. The mere fact that a legislation includes some type of training or religious instruction does not make it unconstitutional,” the court has noted.
There are about 23,500 madrassas in Uttar Pradesh, of which 16,513 are recognized and registered. Of the latter, 560 have funding from the local government.
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