The Karnataka government has revised rules for granting the ‘religious minority’ status to educational institutions by exempting Muslim-run schools and colleges from relaxed admission norms, Indian newspaper Deccan Herald reported.
March 2024 order initially eased the requirement for all religious minority institutions to admit a fixed percentage of students from their respective communities due to difficulties in meeting quotas.
Previously, schools needed to reserve 25%, and higher education institutions 50%, for their respective minority group. The relaxation applied to Christians, Jains, Parsis, and other minorities but was later modified to exclude Muslims.
This followed objections from Muslim institutions and Minority Welfare Minister BZ Zameer Ahmed Khan, who argued that Muslim institutions already had sufficient representation and feared an influx of non-Muslim students.
The decision, influenced by population data from the 2011 Census, effectively sets different criteria for Muslim institutions, reinstating their original admission quotas while easing them for other minority communities.
