By TwoCircles.net staff reporter
New Delhi: With an aim to bring uniformity in state minority commissions and to resolve their financial problems, the National Commission for Minorities (NCM) will soon come up with a model program.
State minority commissions have to work in very difficult conditions. Officials of state minority commissions are poorly paid and no facilities are available to them for discharging their official duties. In states like Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh, they get no more than Rs 4,000 per month. These revelations were made by senior NCM member Har Charan Josh.
He said different states adopt different pay scales in this regard and even that is not enough to meet their requirements. NCM, therefore, felt the need to enforce a model act in all states. Josh told that the proposed act aims at strengthening state minority commissions structurally and financially so that their members are able to work effectively. He said the present condition of the members of state minority commissions is unspeakable whereas the NCM members have been given the status of a state minister.
For any travel, officials of state minority commission are given only bus passes. “How could we expect them work effectively in such circumstances,?” he asked. Joshi said presently, minority commissions have been formed in 15 states only, including Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Chattisgarh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi and Bihar. Josh said that NCM was negotiating with the governments of those states where minority commissions have not yet been formed.