BJP-run states show little interest
By Mumtaz Alam Falahi, TwoCircles.net,
New Delhi: Muslims and other minorities living in some big states like Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Punjab do not need any educational scholarships or these state governments, being run or were being run till recently by BJP independently or in coalition, do not want their minority communities get benefits of the central government’s scholarship schemes.
The data provided by the Union Ministry of Minority Affairs which is running three big scholarship schemes, and its senior officials also say several states did not show any interest in the schemes.
“Despite several reminders regarding forwarding of list of eligible minority students for the three categories of scholarship schemes – pre-matric, post-matric and merit-cum-means – some states did not respond,” a senior official told TwoCircles.net on the condition of anonymity.
In the pre-matric scholarship scheme the centre had set a target of 4 lakh scholarships to be given to minority students in all 35 states/Union Territories in the year 2008-2009. But by December 31, 2008 the centre sanctioned less than two lakh scholarships and only to 14 states. See Table 1A and 1B.
Similarly in the post-matric scheme for the same period the target was 175000 scholarships to be distributed. Only 19 states/UTs responded and just 58,955 could be sanctioned by December 31. “This figure includes fresh and renewal candidates while the target was for fresh candidates, renewal was not included in the target,” says the officer. It means the target of the second category of scholarship scheme was less achieved. See Table 2 A and 2B.
Not better is the condition of the third scheme – merit-cum-means scholarship scheme. Under this scheme the annual target is 20,000 scholarships but the government could sanction only 12,052 which include 5063 renewals. Compared to other two schemes 21 states/UTs responded to this one. See Table 3A and 3B.
Is the ministry going to achieve the target in the remaining three months? “Not sure, but some scholarship recommendations from some states are likely to be sanctioned. But one cannot be 100% sure about the sanctions, says the officer.”
It is not true that only BJP run states have shown little interest to the schemes. The most populous state Uttar Pradesh where Muslims are 18.5% of state population and 22.25% of total Muslim population in India, has nil before its name in all three categories of scholarship schemes.
The Muslim population (as per Census 2001) in other big states which have not shown interest in the scholarship schemes is as follows: Gujarat (9.06%), Rajasthan (8.47%) and Madhya Pradesh (6.37%).
Though the ministry officials are not willing to say that political reasons or community bias could be behind some states not showing interest in minority centric scholarship schemes, these are apparent reasons. However, according to the ministry some states/UTs said they do not want to use these schemes as they have already better scholarship schemes.