The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Minority institutions seek Central funds

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Monday, Feb 25, 2008
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Minority institutions seek Central funds

Special Correspondent

Call to change current practice of issuing temporary certificates to the educational institutions

— Photo: R. Ragu

Justice M.S.A. Siddiqui, Chairman, NCMEI, Delhi, addressing local minority institutions in Chennai on Sunday.

CHENNAI: Minority educational institutions have demanded that they be treated on a par with government schools and should be eligible to receive grants from Union Government initiatives such as the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan scheme.

Several institutions voiced their grievances about insufficient funding to the members of the National Commission for Minority Educational Institutions (NCMEI) here on Sunday.

The NCMEI is a quasi-judicial central authority that provides recommendations to State governments and primarily settles disputes regarding the status of educational institutions.

Vincent Chinnadurai, Chairman, State Minorities Commission (SMC), said the issue of grants would be raised with the State government. “The Central government policy is only for government schools, but as in Tamil Nadu more schools are run by minority institutions, the matter will be taken up,” he said. “We are going to propose that minority institutions be treated the same as government schools.”

According to current regulations, private minority institutions established after 1991 are ineligible to receive government aid. “This distinction is discriminatory,” Iqbal Shah, Joint Secretary, Organisation of Muslim Educational Institutions and Associations of Tamil Nadu (OMEIAT), said.

Fr. Chinnadurai said while the government would be “willing to consider” changing the regulation, it would be a “Rs. 1,000-crore burden” on the exchequer. “We will ask them to gradually take up the issue,” he said.

M.S.A Siddiqui, Chairman, NCMEI, said the NCMEI enjoyed “fruitful discussions” with the State government on Saturday. While he refused to comment on the specific recommendations the NCMEI had made, he stressed the need to change the current practice of issuing temporary certificates to minority institutions.

In Tamil Nadu, they faced difficulties in renewing their certificates as they were required to furnish a number of documents to establish proof of their minority status every year. “Institutions face a problem every year as they are asked for every document,” Fr. Chinnadurai said. “We have recommended that if an institution has been approved at one point of time, that should be sufficient.”

Mr. Siddiqui said a temporary certificate was enough proof of minority status, and he encouraged institutions which had trouble in acquiring new certificates to file petitions with the NCMEI. “We will expeditiously clear cases about temporary certificates,” he said.

Minority institutions say they are not convinced whether the NCMEI’s intervention will solve the problem. “We face this renewal problem every year,” Aby Sam, Joint Director, Hindustan Group of Institutions, said.

“While the NCMEI says that once a certificate has been issued it is permanent, the Department of Technical Education will only give us a certificate that is valid for one year. We have applied for a new certificate the last two years, but we still have had no reply. We don’t know what our status is.”

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