Court case(2002) 8 SCC 481

A large number of petitions by private professional colleges, many run by linguistic and religious minorities, challenged State regulations on admissions, fees and management that had followed Unni Krishnan (1993) and its scheme of free and payment seats. The T.M.A. Pai Foundation, which ran the Manipal institutions in Karnataka, led the batch. Given the conflict between the autonomy of private institutions under Articles 19(1)(g) and 30 and the State's power to regulate, the Court constituted an eleven-judge Bench and framed eleven questions.

Kirpal CJ, for the majority, held that all citizens have a fundamental right to establish and administer educational institutions as an "occupation" under Article 19(1)(g), and religious denominations also under Article 26(a); minorities have the additional and special right under Article 30(1). A minority, religious or linguistic, is to be determined with the State as the unit, since the States were reorganised on linguistic lines. Unaided institutions, minority or not, enjoy maximum autonomy: they may admit students by their own fair, transparent and merit-based procedure and fix fees, provided there is no profiteering or capitation fee. Aided institutions can be subjected to reasonable conditions by the State, and aided minority institutions must admit a reasonable proportion of non-minority students, the proportion to be fixed by the State rather than the rigid fifty per cent of St. Stephen's. The Unni Krishnan scheme was overruled as an unreasonable restriction. Regulations to ensure standards and prevent maladministration are permissible, but the "right to administer" cannot be destroyed.