UPA to spend more on scholarships for minorities

The UPA government will be giving a final push for minority appeasement before the 2014 general elections with the Cabinet on Thursday approving a proposal to spend additional Rs 100 crore for scholarships to minority children.

Updated on: Nov 11, 2013, 01:03:50 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

Prefer HTon Google

Share via

Copy link

The UPA government will be giving a final push for minority appeasement before the 2014 general elections with the Cabinet on Thursday approving a proposal to spend additional Rs 100 crore for scholarships to minority children.

This would be complimented with a new campaign to reach out to the minority community and tell them about the difference the UPA government policies have made in their lives.

Minority, especially Muslims, is considered a key vote-bank in the next general elections as they constitute about 13.4% of the population as per 2001 census. Although the latest religion wise population data has not been released by, most political pundits believe that Muslims would opt for tactical voting to keep out BJP’s Prime Minister candidate Narendra Modi.

Zoya Hassan, a professor of Political Science in Jawaharlal Nehru University in an recent article said: “The Muslim vote bank thesis has gained a fresh lease of life due to the Narendra Modi phenomenon. In the 2014 polls, Muslims will put out all stops to block Modi from reaching 7 Race Course Road (the PM’s residence)”.

The government believes that Muslims can play an important role in return of UPA next summer. But feels it has failed to deliver the message that UPA’s record on social inclusion for minorities has been good.

The government has sought services of planning commission member Sayeeda Hamid, a known Modi critic, and advisor to Prime Minister Sam Pitroda for better projection of UPA’s minority agenda.

On Monday, Hameed, Pitroda with minority affairs minister K Rahman Khan will launch a national portal on Maulana Azad, a foundation on whose name got Rs 160 crore on Thursday for giving scholarships to minorities in the remaining four months of the current fiscal.

The government in the budget had allocated Rs 50 crore to the Maulana Azad Education Foundation for providing scholarships. Last Thursday it revised its decision and increased the allocation to Rs 160 crore for 2013-14.

The Cabinet also revised the 12th five year plan corpus for the foundation --- established to promote education among minorities --- from earlier Rs 750 crore to Rs 1,250 crore. The corpus of the foundation was Rs 700 crore in the 11th five year plan. The foundation was established in 1989 as a voluntary, non-political, non-profit making society.

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

Follow India news real-time updates and the latest news covered on Hindustan Times, featuring today's critical updates on Sonam Wangchuk Hunger Strike LIVE and more across India.