At least 170 Madrasas have been sealed by officials in Uttarakhand in recent days.
While government authorities claim these institutions were operating without registration with the Uttarakhand Madrasa Board or the state education department, local Muslims and Madrasa imams say this is a targeted attack on Muslim institutions.
In Haldwani, a joint team comprising officials from the district administration, municipal corporation, and local police carried out a special inspection drive in the Muslim-majority Banbhulpura area on Sunday. The team said it checked the institutions for proper registration and compliance with other regulatory requirements. During the inspection, several Madrasas were found to be unregistered, leading to the sealing of seven of them, said officers.
Special survey teams were formed by the state government to investigate these Madrasas, based on whose reports the district administration took this strict action, according to a release from the office of Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami.
Many Madrasas in areas like Dehradun, Haridwar, Udham Singh Nagar, and especially Banbhulpura (Haldwani) have either been closed or are under investigation.
Targeting Madrasas, Dhami also said that institutions leading children toward radicalism in the name of education would not be accepted in the state under any circumstances. He was echoing Hindu nationalist campaigns that claim Madrasas are grooming grounds for radicalism.
CM Dhami called the sealing of Madrasas “a historic step.”
Sources say around 500 Madrasas currently operating in the state may be shut down in the days to come.
Many of the sealed Madrasas are decades-old institutions.
This story was originally published in maktoobmedia.com.