The Hindu : National : Muslim meet to discuss RTE Act

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Muslim meet to discuss RTE Act

Vidya Subrahmaniam

New Delhi: Leading Muslim ulema, representatives from the All-India Muslim Personal Law Board and the All-India Milli Council, educational and legal experts, including Vice-Chancellors of universities, will discuss the Right to Education Act (RTE) at a conference to be held here on August 5.

The conference was called by the Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind (JUH), which views the RTE Act as an infringement of Article 30 of the Constitution which gives minorities the right to build and run their own educational institutions.

At a press conference on Friday, the JUH said the meet would deliberate on the many “burning questions” raised by the RTE Act and consider if the law could be amended to “cleanse it of its negative elements.”

The JUH said a worrying aspect of the new law, which made government recognition compulsory for schools, was its impact on the “thousands of poor schools of frugal financial means,” where poor children, especially from the Muslim community studied. There was also a fear that the law would adversely affect the madrasa system of education. The organisation said the meet would simultaneously consider what steps the madrasas could take on their own to modernise and universalise education. The JUH said it planned to invite Union Ministers Kapil Sibal, Salman Khursheed, Veerappa Moily and Ghulam Nabi Azad to the meet.

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