On 12 April 2012, a 2:1 majority of the Supreme Court — Chief Justice S.H. Kapadia and Justice Swatanter Kumar — upheld the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act 2009, including the Section 12(1)(c) mandate that all recognised schools reserve 25% of Class I seats for children from disadvantaged groups and weaker sections. The majority itself carved out the exemption for private unaided minority schools, on the reasoning that the mandate would impair the Article 30(1) right. Justice K.S. Radhakrishnan dissented. The two-step minority exemption began here; Pramati (2014) completed it for aided minority schools.
On 30 July 1992 a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court in Mohini Jain v. State of Karnataka read the right to education out of Article 21 read with the Directive Principles in Articles 38, 39, 41 and 45 and struck down capitation fees in professional colleges. Seven months later, on 4 February 1993, a five-judge Constitution Bench in Unni Krishnan v. State of A.P. refined and re-stated the right — bifurcating its content so that free and compulsory education up to the age of fourteen became enforceable as a fundamental right (later codified as Article 21A by the 86th Amendment) while education beyond that age remained subject to the State's economic capacity. The Bench also imposed the free-seats / payment-seats scheme on private unaided professional institutions and capped capitation fees as unconstitutional. The combined two-step articulation set the doctrinal frame from which the 86th Amendment (2002), the RTE Act 2009, Society for Unaided Private Schools (2012) and Pramati (2014) all proceeded.