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Arjun, Antulay in turf war
HRD minister Arjun Singh has made it clear that the minority affairs ministry should lay off matters of education but the government's first minority affairs minister A.R. Antulay isn't calling it quits yet.
HRD minister Arjun Singh has made it clear that the minority affairs ministry should lay off matters of education but the government's first minority affairs minister A.R. Antulay isn't calling it quits yet.
According to Antulay, the logic behind carving out a new ministry was to enable the government to take a comprehensive view of the state of religious and linguistic minorities in India. This would be possible, he reasoned, when the new ministry would be entrusted with all aspects of minorities being handled by different ministries — from functions related to Haj under the foreign ministry, minority education under the HRD ministry, religious and linguistic minority issues under social justice ministry and possibly rehabilitation of Kashmiri pandits under the home ministry.
If Antulay expected the work allocation process to be a smooth affair, he was in for a surprise. The HRD minister promptly told reporters he wasn't game.
But Antulay isn't listening. "Everything that relates to minorities will come here… It will happen in due course," a confident Antulay said, rejecting arguments emanating from HRD ministry that transferring minority education to the new ministry could lead to compartmentalizing the subject.
Antulay refused to elaborate, arguing that he had already had more than his share of controversies in his six decades of public life. In 2002, he had quit chairmanship of the minority department at the AICC — he described his year-and-a-half stay as its head as a waste of time — dubbing it " a decorative piece”.
