A battle of rights: the right to education of children versus rights of minority schools

ABSTRACT The last decade and a half have witnessed radical changes in the right to education in India. In 2002, a constitutional amendment codified the right to education as a fundamental constitutional right. The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act 2009 (RTE Act) was subsequently enacted to provide a statutory framework for this right’s realisation. These developments have, however, not been without controversy, particularly with respect to the RTE Act’s application to linguistic and religious minority schools. In this article, we analyse the consequences of two Supreme Court judgments that exempted all minority schools from the purview of the Act. We argue that the minority exemption has diluted the core of the RTE Act, which was envisioned as a law guaranteeing the right and access to quality education to all children in India. We then make recommendations aimed at stemming the unwelcome consequences of these judgments.