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Maharashtra government wants formal subjects in madrasas

Tawde says state move not anti-Muslim
MUMBAI: It was decided to carry out a massive survey on July 4 to identify out-of-school children in the state and bring them into mainstream education. A letter pertaining to the decision was sent by Jayshree Mukherjee, principal secretary in the minority affairs department, to Nand Kumar, principal secretary, school education and sports department. Mr Khadse, who was in London, while reacting to this, said the decision has nothing to do with religion.
“The government cannot consider any such institution that does not provide formal education to its students, which includes madrasas, educational institutions of the Warkaris community and other religious institutions,” the minority affairs minister told this newspaper.
He clarified that the government wants madrasas to start imparting formal education by also teaching subjects like English, mathematics, science and social sciences.
“We have also started a scheme according to which they can appoint teachers of their choice for teaching these subjects and the government would pay their salaries, after which their students can be considered school-going kids,” he said.
Maharashtra has some 1,889 madrasas imparting religious education to 1.48 lakh students. The Maharashtra government provides a total grant of Rs 2,000 crore to madrasas for infrastructure facilities.
While HRD minister Vinod Tawde said that though students of madrasas won’t be considered as school-going children, the government would not de-recognise them and their grants would continue as before. “We want to bring subjects like science, social science and maths to the madrasas, with no interference in their religious education. How is that anti-Muslim? We want to do this for their betterment. Under the RTE Act, children who are not taught under the national school curriculum are considered out of school,” Mr Tawde said.
The decision attracted a strong reaction from Opposition and Muslim scholars. Congress spokesperson Sachin Sawant said the decision was taken to divert attention from important issues like corruption, farmer suicides and law and order. “This is nothing but a crisis management pattern being adopted by the Maharashtra BJP government to divert (attention from) critical issues,” Mr Sawant said. Samajwadi Party leader Abu Asim Azmi said any interference in operations in madrasas would be fought tooth and nail.
( Source : deccan chronicle )
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