Blow To pSecularism

A bench of Chief Justice Bhaskar Bhattacharya and Justice J B Pardiwala has ruled that "there cannot be scope of conferring monetary benefits based on religion". The bench was hearing the issue on the Gujarat government's non-implementation of a scheme proposed by the Centre. In this scheme, the Centre offers pre-matriculation scholarships for children of five minority communities. The state government refused to participate and implement the scheme claiming that it would not prefer to benefit a student from a particular religion, for the Constitution mandates it to remain secular in this regard. It argued that giving benefit to minorities would be a discrimination against other religious communities.

ToI: 'No govt largesse on faith lines'