High Court orders status quo ante in cases filed against applicability of new law to minority schools

The Madras High Court on Friday ordered maintenance of status quo as on December 17, 1975 when a Division Bench had declared as inapplicable certain provisions of the Tamil Nadu Recognised Private Schools (Regulation) Act of 1973, and the statutory rules framed thereunder in 1974, to the minority educational institutions.

The Madras High Court on Friday ordered maintenance of status quo as on December 17, 1975 when a Division Bench had declared as inapplicable certain provisions of the Tamil Nadu Recognised Private Schools (Regulation) Act of 1973, and the statutory rules framed thereunder in 1974, to the minority educational institutions.

Justices S.S. Sundar and P.B. Balaji passed the interim order on a batch of writ petitions filed by the Congregation of Sisters of St. Anne’s, the Institute of Franciscan Missionaries of Mary Society and many others challenging certain provisions of the Tamil Nadu Private Schools (Regulation) Act of 2018 and the statutory rules framed under it this year.

Though Advocate General R. Shunmugasundaram vehemently objected to the grant of interim orders, the judges said, all the writ petitions challenging the new law, which came into force this year, would be taken up for hearing on June 15 and till then the status quo as it had been prevailing since December 17, 1975 should be allowed to continue.

Representing the petitioners, senior counsel Fr. A. Xavier Arulraj and Isaac Mohanlal brought it to the notice of the court that the minority institutions had initially challenged certain provisions of the 1973 Act as well as the 1974 Rules on the ground that they abrogate the rights of minority educational institutions as enshrined under Article 30(1) of the Constitution.

A Division Bench of the High Court allowed those writ petitions and declared many provisions to be inapplicable to minority institutions. The State government took the matter on appeal to the Supreme Court which remitted the case to the High Court on March 4, 2003 with an order to maintain status quo unless the High Court decides to modify it.

Thereafter, the State government filed an affidavit before the High Court that it intends to come up with a comprehensive law governing all private schools in the State. Therefore, the court recorded the submission and disposed of the writ petitions with a direction to maintain the status quo as on December 17, 1975 until the new law comes into force.

Though the government enacted the new law in 2018, it came into force only in January this year after the framing of the statutory rules and hence the writ petitioners had rushed to the court once again contending that the provisions of the new law too were in violation of the constitutional right of the minorities to administer educational institutions.