By Abdul Hameed, TwoCircles.net,
Mumbai: In what may be called the appeasement of minorities before the Assembly Elections in Maharashtra, the state Minorities Welfare Department yesterday distributed cheques for educational, social and economic upliftment of minorities, in a function organized in the SNDT Mumbai University.
The cheques were handed over to the minority students seeking technical and professional education, the Urdu medium schools and Muslim dominated Mahanagar Palikas by the Chief Minister (CM) Ashok Chavan and Deputy CM Chhagan Bhujbal. Haji Anees Ahmad, Minority Affairs Minister, Nawab Malik, Labor Minister, Arif Naseem Khan, Minister of State for Home, Naseem Siddiqui, chairman, Maharashtra Minority Commission, Ameen Patel, chairman, Maulana Azad Minorities Financial Development Corporation (MAMFDC), and Basheer Musa Patel, MLA, were present, among others, at the function..
A total of Rs 75 lakhs was distributed among the minority students with each of them getting Rs 15,000.
‘We won’t succeed unless we make the minority students IPS and IAS officers. I think the government should bear the expenses of the students wanting to appear for the competitive examinations,’ said CM Ashok Chavan.
The Urdu medium schools were allotted cheques worth Rs 2 lakh each and thus put together they were given Rs 1.25 crore. The amount was meant for providing basic infrastructures to the schools including toilet, library, laboratory and other basic amenities.
Mr. Chavan said that Urdu should progress in Maharashtra and, therefore, the Urdu Academy has been put under the Ministry of Minority Affairs.
The Mahanagar Palikas of the Muslim dominated areas were allotted a total of Rs 10 crore, as per their grades, to make the Muslim dominated areas equipped with the basic necessities.
Addressing the gathering the CM said, ‘Maharashtra is the first state to introduce a separate minorities department, as recommended in the Sachar Committee report, and has started to carry out different schemes for the welfare of the minorities.’
He praised the activities initiated by the Minister of Minorities Affairs and the Minorities Welfare Department of Maharashtra and said that earlier the department was allotted Rs 167 crore but in the recently presented budget for the year 2009, the amount has been increased to 210 crore. ‘If needed, the amount will be increased even more. But the most important thing is to ensure that the amount reaches the deserving poor ones. The responsibility in this regard lies with the minorities department,’ said Mr. Chavan, adding, ‘The state cannot go ahead until the minorities get developed.’
‘This is not the ‘Department of Minorities’ rather it is the ‘Minorities Welfare Department,’ said Mr. Chavan.
starting his talk with ‘As salamu alikum,’ Chhagan Bhujbal, the Deputy Chief Minister of the State said that the claim by the governments that they care about the minorities turned out to be hollow when the Sachar Committee revealed that the status of Muslims (the largest minority and the second majority) is worse than that of the SC and ST. ‘They do not have representation in government jobs and their educational status is abysmal.’
He added that it was the responsibility of the NGOs to make these schemes common to the public. ‘The conditions to get benefit from these schemes should not be too tough,’ he added.