National Commission for Minority Educational Institutions (NCMEI) was a new statutory body with the powers of a civil court setup by the Congress in 2004 .
They swept into power in May 2004, by November 2004 they had already passed an ordinance establishing this new body.
It had the power to grant of minority certificates to educational institutions . These minority certificates enabled educational institutions to escape the provisions of RTE act.
The really interesting parts of the act are below
Sec 4 (1) (a) of the act states
A person shall not be qualified for appointment as the Chairperson unless he is a member of a minority community .
Sec 4(2)(a) states
A person shall not be qualified for appointment as a Member unless he is a member of a minority community
The UPA had setup a judicial tribunal which by law can only have non-Hindu judges.
Now This may not be a problem if the institutions are functioning purely in the minority domain like Sharia Courts
The problem is that the minority schools and colleges operating in public domain and directly affecting public interest are able to access an EXCLUSIVE judicial tribunal consisting only of minority judges .
This is an exclusive tribunal that prevents one class of education providers from approaching it. For instance, schools run by Hindus cannot approach the NCMEI if their NOC certificate is delayed or denied.
Even for purely religious schools like Madrassas there is discrimination against Hindus because it treats the minorities as a undifferentiated group. A Christian chairperson is allowed to examine minority status of a Muslim institution but the assumption is that a Hindu can’t
A Hindu run school which is also denied a No-Objection-Certificate or University affiliation cannot approach this “court” let alone get heard by a non sectarian tribunal .
The most famous example of what we mentioned above is what happened to the (NPS) institutions. In 2016 the secretary of the commission to file an FIR against KP Gopalakrishna, founder-chairman of the National Public School (NPS) institutions,
for forging the signature of the commission authorities and using seal of the commission to create fake minority certificate. NPS has claimed a Malayalee linguistic minority status as its founder KP Gopalakrishna is from Kerala.
Over much of UPA-1 and UPA-2 the NCMEI went on to grant thousands of minority certificates which enabled educational institutions to escape the provisions of RTE act .
The Congress within months of coming to power secured two major ideological victories. Not only did they pass the 93rd Amendment but they also setup the statutory body (NCMEI) that would check against any ‘redefinition’ of the term minority. These two remain in place till today