The Supreme Court on Wednesday sent to the Chief Justice for constitution of an appropriate larger Bench the issue of whether the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 (RTE Act) can be applied to minority educational institutions, after a two-judge Bench in Anjuman Ishaat-E-Taleem Trust v. State of Maharashtra, 2025 INSC 106, questioned the correctness of the 2014 Constitution Bench judgment in Pramati Educational & Cultural Trust v. Union of India, (2014) 8 SCC 1.
In Pramati Educational & Cultural Trust, a five-judge Constitution Bench had held that the RTE Act, insofar as it applied to minority schools, whether aided or unaided, was unconstitutional in view of the protection guaranteed to minority institutions under Article 30(1) of the Constitution. The judgment had effectively placed minority educational institutions outside the ambit of the RTE Act.
However, while deciding Anjuman Ishaat-E-Taleem Trust on September 1, 2025, a Bench of Justices Dipankar Datta and Manmohan expressed doubts over the correctness of this blanket exemption. The Bench noted that while Pramati had dealt substantially with the applicability of Section 12(1)(c) of the RTE Act, which requires private unaided schools to reserve 25% of seats for children from weaker and disadvantaged sections, it had proceeded to hold that the entire RTE Act would not apply to minority institutions.
The September 1 judgment therefore formulated questions for consideration by a larger Bench, including whether Pramati requires reconsideration and whether the RTE Act infringes the rights of minorities under Article 30(1). The Court also questioned whether, even if Section 12(1)(c) were found to encroach upon minority rights, the provision could be read down rather than resulting in exclusion of the entire statute.
The present hearing concerned the next procedural step in that reference. Counsel submitted that since the earlier decision was rendered by a five-judge Constitution Bench and its correctness has been doubted, the matter would ultimately have to be considered by a larger Bench.
Counsel referred the Bench to paragraphs 209 and 210 of the September 1, 2025 judgment, where the questions concerning Pramati had been framed, and the Registry was directed to place the papers before the Chief Justice for appropriate orders.
The matter subsequently came up in a batch of review proceedings arising from the September 2025 judgment. The review petitions challenged, among other things, the requirement that in-service teachers qualify the Teacher Eligibility Test (TET). In May 2026, the Supreme Court rejected the review pleas while extending the time available to eligible in-service teachers to obtain the TET qualification until August 31, 2028.
Following that, the matter was listed before the present bench of Justice Vikram Nath, Justice Sandeep Mehta and Justice NV Anjaria. Before the present Bench, it was argued that since the decision in Pramati Educational & Cultural Trust was rendered by a five-judge Constitution Bench, the matter, having been doubted by the present Bench, could be referred directly to a seven-judge Bench. However, the Bench indicated that the matter would first have to be placed before the Chief Justice for appropriate orders on the constitution of the bench of appropriate strength.
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“We are not sending to five or seven. Let that call be taken by the Chief Justice. He may constitute the seven judges. He can do it.”