CS raps depts for not giving reports on minority welfare schemes

 Chief Secretary Kaushik Mukherjee on Tuesday pulled up several government departments for not submitting status reports on the implementation of the prime minister’s new 15-point programme for the minorities. 

The review committee held its 9th State-level meeting at the Vidhana Soudha on Tuesday. Speaking after the meeting, Mukherjee said: “Several departments have not even submitted the basic progress report of minority programmes in the State. We have pulled them up and asked them to submit their reports by November 10.” 

Rural Development and Panchayat Raj (RDPR) and Urban Development were among the departments that were pulled up. Mukherjee, however, lauded a few programmes that have shown substantial progress such as the scholarship programme by the Education department and the minority credit scheme. 

Staff shortage in madrasas 

Meanwhile, in the Action Taken Report (ATR), the Directorate of Urdu and Other Minority Languages said there was a shortage of teachers for subjects such as mathematics, computer science, science and English in madrasas.

 The report stated that the scheme for providing quality education in madrasas was discussed at the previous meeting held in June. In the absence of a madrasa board in Karnataka, some are functioning under the directorate. The chairman of the committee suggested that officials initiate modern education in all madrasas by providing necessary infrastructure.  For this, the ATR has said that sufficient steps taken to promote madrasas and periodic meetings were being organised with the religious heads. The media and the Internet have been used to create awareness but even after giving such wide publicity, madrasas are not evincing interest, the report revealed. 

Referring to the request from the commissioner for public instruction to increase the pre-metric scholarship amount to students of government schools from Rs 1,000 to Rs 5,000, the ATR has said that as per the Centre’s direction, minority students in government schools from class 1 to 10 need not pay any fees.

The annual maintenance fee given for each student is Rs 1,000. Minority students who intend to go abroad for higher education are being sanctioned Rs five lakh each year. The maximum they can get is Rs 10 lakh.