The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Regulation to prevent exploitation: Ponmudy

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Thursday, Feb 21, 2008
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Regulation to prevent exploitation: Ponmudy

Special Correspondent

Set your house in order, minority institutions told

CHENNAI: Procedures and rules regulating the administration of minority educational institutions should not be seen as a matter of controlling their rights but implementing the needed checks and balances, Minister for Higher Education K. Ponmudy said on Tuesday.

Addressing a seminar on the rights and problems of minority educational institutions, Mr. Ponmudy said such regulations were meant to prevent exploitation.

He asked minority institutions to set their house in order and safeguard against exploitation or intra-institutional politics. Especially since the language minorities entered the field, such exploitation had occurred, he said.

The seminar presented an 11-point resolution urging the government to guarantee that the rights of minorities to govern their own educational institutions.

“The privileges and rights enshrined in the Constitution…must not be allowed to be interfered with, and the minorities should not be deprived of their rights in the guise of procedural requirements by discriminatory bureaucrats, as the one enforced on schools and colleges in the appointment of teachers recently,” said U. Mohamed Khalilullah, former president of the Muslim Educational Association of South India.

Minority institution heads complained that Madras University authorities had refused to approve the qualifications of selected teachers on the grounds that the selection committee did not include nominees from the university.

They claimed that the constitutional guarantee in Article 30 clauses (1) and (2) that all minorities “shall have the right to establish and administer educational institutions of their choice” exempted them from the university’s requirement.

Welcoming the 3.5 per cent reservation for Muslims and Christians, Mr. Khalilullah said the present roster system discriminated against the Muslim backward community and called for an alternative procedure.

The minority admission quota system also came under fire. Madras High Court advocate Habibullah Badsha said when the government set a quota of 50-75 per cent for admission of students from minority communities, it was curtailing the institutions’ right to administration.

Sheik Mohamed, principal of Jamal Mohamed College, Tiruchi, opposed the 33 per cent quota for women in the appointment of staff.

“In a men’s college, how can we be expected to hire Muslim women teachers,” he asked. Syed Shahabudeen, principal of the Islamiah College, Vaniyambadi, said since the problems faced by Muslim institutions were unique, the government should ensure representation for Oriental colleges in all university syndicates.

Other demands included permanent grant of minority status, Part-I language status for Urdu, permission to start minority medical colleges and free land and grant in aid for teachers’ salaries for minority schools.

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