From pre-school education till higher education, there will be a special package for Muslims, minister of state for HRD, MAA Fatimi, announced on Wednesday. And, the government will also examine the demand for reservation for Dalit Muslims on the lines of reservation for Scheduled Caste Hindus.
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Talking to reporters after a two-day meeting with Muslims MPs, intellectuals and leaders on the recommendations of Sachar Panel report, Fatimi said: "I want to assure Muslims that this time government is serious about initiating action for upliftment of Muslims. By January 10, we will submit a detailed action plan for providing education to Muslims from ‘anganwadi till higher education’ to the Planning Commission for preparing specific projects in the 11th Five-Year-Plan for the community".
The call for more good quality schools and colleges for Muslims and teaching them in their mother tongue were made by the participants, he said. On the Sachar Panel recommendation for recognising degrees or diplomas awarded by madarsas, Fatimi said the government was examining setting up of Central Madarsa Board in consultation with religious leaders to legitimise madarsa education. "A paper is being prepared but there is no consensus on the issue so far," he informed.
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On the controversial issue of reservation to Dalit Muslims, Fatimi appeared positively inclined towards the demand, made by majority of the participants. "In 1950, the minorities were removed from the purview of reservation to the Scheduled Castes. Later, neo-Buddhists and Sikhs were brought under SC reservation ambit but Muslims were denied the benefit," he said. And, added that the issue will be examined by the government. Reservation to Dalit Muslims has also been recommended by the Sachar panel.
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On the controversial issue of reservation to Dalit Muslims, Fatimi appeared positively inclined towards the demand, made by majority of the participants. "In 1950, the minorities were removed from the purview of reservation to the Scheduled Castes. Later, neo-Buddhists and Sikhs were brought under SC reservation ambit but Muslims were denied the benefit," he said. And, added that the issue will be examined by the government. Reservation to Dalit Muslims has also been recommended by the Sachar panel.
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At the first meeting of the committee to prepare an action-plan to implement Sachar panel recommendations, the participants also demanded special scholarships and loan at lower interest rates for Muslim students to reap benefit for education. HRD minister Arjun Singh had constituted the committee headed by Fatimi to examine the Sachar Panel report.
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.
