Panel for madrassa board on CBSE lines

The National Commission for Minority Education Institutions has called for a meeting of Muslim ulemas on December 3.

Published on: Nov 23, 2006, 20:06:00 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The National Commission for Minority Education Institutions (NCMEI) has called for a meeting of Muslim ulemas on December 3 in the Capital to discuss a concept paper on Central Madrassa Board.

The need for modernisation of madrassas was also stressed by HRD Minister Arjun Singh on Monday but the meeting is the first concrete steps towards a Central Madarsa Board.

However, Singh clarified on the government policy on Muslim education when he said, "We don't want to force anything on them. Discussions for building consensus are going on."

Working on similar lines, NCMEI has called representatives of various state madrassa boards, religious groups and maulanas for the conference.

"For the first time, a concept paper having best practices of various madrassa boards has been prepared. We are suggesting a board on the lines of Central Board of Secondary Education," a senior commission official said.

Hope for success of a madrassa board comes from West Bengal where passouts from religious schools affiliated to the state Madrassa Board have cleared IIT-JEE exams. But, then, some other state madrassa boards have not done well.

However, the government is looking at a bigger picture when it comes to lack of education among Muslims, as pointed out by Sachar Panel.

"Muslim education is not restricted to madrassas," Singh admitted. Stressing on benefits of conventional education, Arjun Singh said the ministry had taken several steps, including opening of new primary level schools in Muslim-dominated areas under Sarva Siksha Abhiyan.

In case of higher education, Singh admitted that Muslims were facing some problems in opening new institutes, but the commission has been asked to look into the complaints. "We are also bringing OBC reservation under which Muslims castes are covered," he said.

Years of neglect cannot change in a few days, Singh observed, when asked to respond to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s call for fair share to Muslims.

"Access to education has been accelerated in Muslim, SC,ST and OBC dominated areas. Change will be visible in some time," he said.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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