The article is an excerpt from the judgment Anjuman Ishaat E. Taleem Trust v. The State of Maharashtra and ors. (2025 SCC Online SC 1912)
72. The right to elementary education in India did not begin its journey as a fundamental right. In the Constitution, as originally drafted, elementary education was initially recognized only as a Directive Principle of State Policy under Article 45, which provided:
“The State shall endeavour to provide, within a period of ten years from the commencement of this Constitution, for free and compulsory education for all children until they complete the age of fourteen years.”
73. Article 45 seems to be the only directive principle framed with a specific time frame, reflecting the urgency and significance that the framers of the Constitution placed on its implementation. This directive, though aspirational, was unfortunately not judicially enforceable and depended heavily on the discretion and capacity of the State. The framers of the Constitution consciously placed ‘EDUCATION’ in Part IV, recognizing its criticality but also acknowledging the financial and administrative limitations of the newly independent nation.
74. The drafting history of the Constitution reveals that the inclusion of elementary education as a fundamental right was deliberated upon but ultimately deferred. Several members of the Constituent Assembly advocated for a justiciable fundamental right to education, arguing that without education, other rights and civil liberties would remain meaningless(61). However, a competing viewpoint-concerned with resource constraints and state capacity-prevailed(62). This led to the compromise of placing the right to elementary education as a non-enforceable and a non-binding directive principle, to be pursued by the State progressively over time.
[(61) Constituent Assembly of India Debates (Volume 7, 08.12.1948), 7.51.18 (Z.H. Lari); (Volume 8, 19.11.1948), 7.56.22 (Ananthasayanam Ayyangar), 7.56.53 & 7.56.56 (K.T. Shah)]
[(62) Constituent Assembly of India Debates (Volume 7, 23.11.1948)]
75. However, through judicial pronouncements, the movement to recognize education, particularly elementary education, as a fundamental right gained momentum.
76. A decade before the enactment of the Constitution (Eighty-sixth Amendment) Act, 2002, which introduced Article 21A, a two-Judge Bench of this Court in Mohini Jain v. State of Karnataka, (1992) 3 SCC 666 held:
“12. … The right to education flows directly from right to life. The right to life under Article 21 and the dignity of an individual cannot be assured unless it is accompanied by the right to education. The State Government is under an obligation to make endeavour to provide educational facilities at all levels to its citizens.
17. We hold that every citizen has a ‘right to education’ under the Constitution. The State is under an obligation to establish educational institutions to enable the citizens to enjoy the said right. The State may discharge its obligation through state-owned or state-recognised educational institutions. When the State Government grants recognition to the private educational institutions it creates an agency to fulfil its obligation under the Constitution. The students are given admission to the educational institutions – whether state-owned or state-recognised – in recognition of their ‘right to education’ under the Constitution. Charging capitation fee in consideration of admission to educational institutions, is a patent denial of a citizen’s right to education under the Constitution.”
77. However, in Unni Krishnan, J. P. v. State of Andhra Pradesh, (1993) 1 SCC 645, the correctness of the decision in Mohini Jain (supra) was challenged by private educational institutions. Though the decision was not affirmed in its entirety, the lead judgment of the five-Judge Constitution Bench of this Court further expanded the right to elementary education and while holding that a child up to the age of 14 years has a fundamental right to free education, held as follows:
“171. In the above state of law, it would not be correct to contend that Mohini Jain was wrong insofar as it declared that ‘the right to education flows directly from right to life’. But the question is what is the content of this right? How much and what level of education is necessary to make the life meaningful? Does it mean that every citizen of this country can call upon the State to provide him education of his choice? In other words, whether the citizens of this country can demand that the State provide adequate number of medical colleges, engineering colleges and other educational institutions to satisfy all their educational needs? Mohini Jain seems to say, yes. With respect, we cannot agree with such a broad proposition. The right to education which is implicit in the right to life and personal liberty guaranteed by Article 21 must be construed in the light of the directive principles in Part IV of the Constitution. So far as the right to education is concerned, there are several articles in Part IV which expressly speak of it. Article 41 says that the ‘State shall, within the limits of its economic capacity and development, make effective provision for securing the right to work, to education and to public assistance in cases of unemployment, old age, sickness and disablement, and in other cases of undeserved want’. Article 45 says that ‘the State shall endeavour to provide, within a period of ten years from the commencement of this Constitution, for free and compulsory education for all children until they complete the age of fourteen years’. Article 46 commands that ‘the State shall promote with special care the educational and economic interests of the weaker sections of the people, and, in particular, of the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes, and shall protect them from social injustice and all forms of exploitation’. Education means knowledge – and ‘knowledge itself is power’. As rightly observed by John Adams, ‘the preservation of means of knowledge among the lowest ranks is of more importance to the public than all the property of all the rich men in the country’. (Dissertation on Canon and Feudal Law, 1765) It is this concern which seems to underlie Article 46. It is the tyrants and bad rulers who are afraid of spread of education and knowledge among the deprived classes. Witness Hitler railing against universal education. He said: ‘Universal education is the most corroding and disintegrating poison that liberalism has ever invented for its own destruction.’ (Rauschning, The Voice of Destruction : Hitler speaks.) A true democracy is one where education is universal, where people understand what is good for them and the nation and know how to govern themselves. The three Articles 45, 46 and 41 are designed to achieve the said goal among others. It is in the light of these Articles that the content and parameters of the right to education have to be determined. Right to education, understood in the context of Articles 45 and 41, means : (a) every child/citizen of this country has a right to free education until he completes the age of fourteen years, and (b) after a child/citizen completes 14 years, his right to education is circumscribed by the limits of the economic capacity of the State and its development. […].
175. Be that as it may, we must say that at least now the State should honour the command of Article 45. It must be made a reality – at least now. Indeed, the National Education Policy 1986 says that the promise of Article 45 will be redeemed before the end of this century. Be that as it may, we hold that a child (citizen) has a fundamental right to free education up to the age of 14 years.”
(emphasis in original)
78. The decision in Unni Krishnan (supra), however, stands overruled by an eleven-Judge Constitution Bench of this Hon’ble Court in T.M.A. Pai Foundation (supra) albeit on a different point.
79. These two decisions together interpreted Article 21, i.e., the right to life, as including the right to elementary education, providing the groundwork for its constitutional recognition as a fundamental right. The right to life and dignity was held to be incomplete without access to basic education, thus, reading into the Constitution an implicit fundamental right to education even before it was formally codified in 2002.
80. These judicial efforts culminated in the Constitution (Eighty-sixth Amendment) Act, 2002, which introduced Article 21A into the Constitution.
81. Alongside Article 21A, the amendment also substituted Article 45 to focus on early childhood care and education and introduced a corresponding fundamental duty under Article 51A(k), requiring parents and guardians to ensure educational opportunities for their children between the ages of 6 and 14.
82. Article 21A, thus, marked a constitutional transformation by elevating the child’s right to free and compulsory elementary education to the status of an enforceable fundamental right.
83. Notably, the right to education which is positioned right after the right to life and personal liberty, underscores the intrinsic connection between life and knowledge acquisition, to be gained through elementary education. This sequence of rights is also reflective of Parliament’s consciousness of the critical nexus between knowledge and human dignity.