Date:26/06/2003 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2003/06/26/stories/2003062606870500.htm

Other States - Rajasthan

Madrassa Board office inaugurated

By Our Staff Correspondent

JAIPUR JUNE 25. Five months after the Madrassa Board was appointed in Rajasthan for modernisation of education in the Muslim seminaries, its office was inaugurated here this week with a call to Muslims to join the mainstream of education and help remove myths about their religion prevalent in society.

Rajasthan is the seventh State in the country to establish a Madrassa Board. Though the State Budget for 2002-03 had announced the establishment of the Board with an allocation of Rs. 50 lakhs, the notification for its appointment was issued only on January 27 this year. The money was not released and an additional allocation of Rs. 50 lakhs was made jointly for the Madrassa Board and the Waqf Board in the Budget for 2003-4.

A former civil servant, Alauddin Azad -- who has been appointed the Madrassa Board's Chairman -- asserts that the establishment of the Board as a Government body would effectively rebut false propaganda about madrassas being the breeding ground for terrorism and haven for the ISI agents. "We will develop madrassas as model institutions,'' he said.

Inaugurating the new two-room office in Pant Krishi Bhavan here, the Chairperson of the State Human Rights Commission, Justice Syed Sagheer Ahmed, said that madrassa education should be evolved in such a manner that it helped the youth become self- reliant. "A proper combination of religious and secular education will shape the dynamic personality of children.''

Mr. Azad said the pattern on which the Madhya Pradesh Madrassa Board was functioning had been extensively studied and the Rajasthan Board would take several initiatives to improve the standard of education. He pointed out that while the Madhya Pradesh Board was fully utilising the funds provided by the Centre under the madrassa modernisation scheme, no such funds were available in Rajasthan.

The State Government had earlier recognised 619 madrassas and started the process for appointment of para-teachers in them under the Rajiv Gandhi golden jubilee school scheme. However, the appointments have not been made in all the recognised madrassas so far and the free books and other materials have not been supplied. The Madrassa Board is expected to speed up the process of the State Government's support to these traditional institutions of elementary education. The Board's Member-Secretary, Azam Beg, said the district-level committees and a 51-member Advisory Committee at the State level would monitor the implementation of various programmes.

Among others, the Board's 15 members -- including Mufti Abdul Sattar, Maulana Fazl-e-Haq and Zahira Shamim -- convenor of the Rajasthan Muslim Forum, Qari Moinuddin, and a large number of academicians and educationists attended the inaugural function.