Professor Faizan Mustafa, the Vice-Chancellor of Chanakya National Law University and a professor of law at Aligarh Muslim University, said that the Supreme Court of India in the 1974 St. Xavier judgement had said that minority rights are part of the basic structure of the constitution and cannot be tampered with “as long as the constitution survives”. He said, in fact, the earlier 1973 Kesavananda Bharati judgement has specifically laid down that minority rights are part of the basic structure.
In a 35-minute interview to Karan Thapar for The Wire, Mustafa made clear that any claim to the contrary is not just unfounded and wrong but also malicious.