By A. Mirsab, TwoCircles.net,
Mumbai: Considering the backwardness of Minorities in the Education field, Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan Thursday asked the state bureaucracy to bring out a separate education policy for minority students.
In a meeting organized at ‘Sahyadri Guest house’ with leaders from the Muslim community on Thursday, chief minister Prithviraj Chavan directed the state education department to finalize the policy and place it before the cabinet for its approval. The policy is expected to be cleared before the assembly elections due in November this year.
CM Prithviraj Chavan meeting with Minority leaders.
The meeting was held for discussing various welfare measures adopted to bring minorities into the mainstream. While directing bureaucracy for bringing out independent education policy for Minorities he said different surveys and reports had pointed at low education levels and high dropout ratio among the minorities.
Prithviraj Chavan has also asked for another policy to provide loans to minorities to enable them to buy land in rural areas under the Indira Awaas Yojana.
Minorities minister Naseem Khan said 650 acres of Wakf Board land had been freed from encroachments and would be used for the benefit of the Muslim community. Minister of state for education, Fauziya Khan, said the 5 % reservation granted to Muslim will benefit students from the community but there’s an urgent need to sanction Urdu schools and to grant them aid.
The meeting with CM was attended by Minority Minister Arif Naseem Khan, Education Minister Fauzia Khan, State Minority Chairman Munaf Hakim, former MP Maulana Abedur Raheman Azmi, NCP leader Sayed Jalaluddin and others.