Several students enrolled in Kamil and Fazil programmes at madrassas in Uttar Pradesh are now looking for alternative academic options after the Supreme Court struck down the state madrassa board’s authority to award these degrees, calling it a violation of the UGC Act.

When the court delivered its ruling on November 5 last year, nearly 32,000 students were pursuing these graduate-level (Kamil) and postgraduate-level (Fazil) courses.

The court said that the Uttar Pradesh madrassa education board’s practice of awarding these degrees was “unconstitutional" because only universities recognised under the UGC Act can do so.

For many students, this has created serious uncertainty. Saqlain Raza, a Fazil first-year student at Madarsa Jamia Farooquia in Varanasi told PTI that he is preparing to

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