Rollback of decision to do away with MANF scheme for minorities: BJP MP

NEW DELHI: BJP MP Pritam Munde demanded that the Union government should take back its recent decision of doing away with certain scholarships for minority communities.

The Maulana Azad Fellowship (MANF) for minority students pursuing higher education has been scrapped while the government's pre-matric scholarship for them will no longer apply to students from Class 1 to Class 8. Raising the issue in the Lok Sabha, Munde said the decision was taken without any prior intimation and this year also, thousands of students had given applications for it.

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"I demand that the government should rethink this decision. Education is free in right to education but this (scholarships) work as an encouragement for these students in schools," she said. "Looking at this issue from the point of view that students are not pushed towards child labour and stay on the path of education, the decision be revoked after a rethink," the MP from Maharashtra's Beed said.

Speaking on the matter, union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman said that students who won the Maulana Azad National Fellowship (MANF) before March 31, 2022, will continue to receive the benefit till the end of their scholarship period.

The MANF was offered to students who belong to one of the six communities- Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, Parsis, and Jains). The central government terminated the five-year financial assistance MANF scheme for minority communities for higher education due to an overlap with existing scholarship schemes such as pre-matric scholarship scheme, post matric scholarship scheme and merit-cum-means based scholarship scheme since 2012-13.

Activists and students organisations have been protesting the move. "The government’s decision to discontinue MANF Fellowship aligns with its neglectful attitude towards the minorities of the nation. It should also be seen as continual of the anti- students’ New Education Policy. SFI reiterates our commitment to fight for public education and demands the reinstatement of the MANF scheme." read a recent Students' Federation of India (SFI) statement.