By Abdul Alim Jafri / News Click
Lucknow: Three months after the Yogi Adityanath government ordered a survey of “unrecognised madrasas’ in Uttar Pradesh (UP), the Centre has instructed the state government to stop providing scholarships to seminary students enrolled in classes one to eight citing provisions of free education under the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009.
According to a government notification, students of classes one to eight are provided education, Mid-Day meals and other facilities free of cost, and, therefore, there is no point in continuing the scholarships. Students of classes 9 and 10 are still eligible for government benefits.
Earlier, students from classes one to five got an annual scholarship of Rs 1,000 while students from classes five to eight used to get it on the basis of the courses they opted for. As per government data, around 5 lakh students of 16,558 madrasas in the state received scholarships last year.
“The way the government is going ahead, they could shut down madrasas in Uttar Pradesh someday,” Muslim Raza Khan, a teacher at a Ghazipur madrasa told Newsclick. “Basically, the government did not like it as only minority students were getting scholarships while there was no such facility for non-minority students. The majority of madrasa belong to financially weaker sections of the community. After the decision, most of the students dependent on the Rs 1,000 scholarship will be deprived of education.”
This story was originally published in newsclick.in . Read the full story here
