Gujarat High Court disposes PIL on 'religious profiling' of students

The Gujarat High Court's division bench of Acting Chief Justice AS Dave and Justice Biren Vaishnav on Thursday disposed off a public interest litigation (PIL) alleging that the Gujarat Secondary and Higher Secondary Education Board is carrying out 'religious profiling' of Muslim candidates appearing for class X and XII examinations.

The case was disposed off after the board's lawyer Arun Oza satisfied the court that the allegations against the board by the petitioner-advocate KR Koshti were baseless and ill-founded.

Koshti had claimed that the board was illegally profiling students of minority religion, more particularly of Muslims. He had also contended that the board's action to seek Aadhar details in the form was in contravention of the Supreme Court judgment.

During the hearing on Thursday, the board stated that the data of minorities was being collected as per a 2012 circular of the Ministry of Human Resource Development to reduce dropouts of Muslim students and take informed decisions, based on available data, for their upliftment. The board also clarified that to take any measures for upliftment of Muslim students having highest drop-out rate among all religion, data was required.

As far as the allegation that the board has made it mandatory for students to declare their religion as well as reveal their Aadhar details, the board clarified that these sections were not mandatory for the students.