UP Madrassa Board rejects inquiry, NCPCR says admitting Hindu students 'won't be tolerated'

NEW DELHI: UP State Madrassa Education Board chairman Iftikhar Ahmed Javed on Wednesday said that the members of the board rejected the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights’ (NCPCR) recommendation to conduct an inquiry into all government-funded and recognised madrassas that are admitting non-Muslim children.

Reacting to the Javed’s statement, NCPCR chairperson Priyank Kanoongo said, “The board is insisting on giving Muslim religious education to Hindu children with government money. This is illegal, if you want to teach children then build a school. Attempts to play with the demography of the country for the sake of their own income will not be tolerated,”

Calling it “a silly statement”, he further said that “Madrassas primarily teach Islamic religious education, Hindu or other non-Islamic children have no work there, it is the responsibility of the state government to get them admitted in schools.”

In December 2022, the apex child rights body, NCPCR, had asked states to conduct an inquiry on non-Muslim students attending government-funded or madrassas and receiving scholarships.

After a meeting of the UP State Madrassa Education Board on January 18, its chairman Iftikhar Ahmed Javed said: “The NCERT syllabus would be operationalised in madrasas from March-April 2023. The recommendation of the National Child Rights Protection Commission for an inquiry into madrassa giving admission to non-Muslim children was rejected by the board members. They said that students of every faith have the right to study in madrassas. As madrassas of the state are undergoing modernisation, they teach every subject along with religion.”

Speaking to The Indian Express, Javed said the Board is against such a “discriminatory” practice where students are categorised based on their religion.

“We follow the ideology ‘Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas’ of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. And under the leadership of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, we won’t indulge in a practice where students of non-Muslim faiths are removed from madrassa and transferred to other schools. This kind of practice should not be implemented in the education sector. If parents are sending their children to our madrassas, they will continue to study there,” said Javed.

According to the data of the latest survey, about 25,000 madrassas are being operated in Uttar Pradesh and only 560 of those get grants from the government.

The parliamentary standing committee report tabled in Lok Sabha last month flagged that in the absence of detailed information it will be difficult to implement the New Education Policy (NEP) across the madrassas.