Aurangabad: Taking strong objection over this year’s budget cut in Pre-metric and post-metric scholarships meant for minorities, a Maharashtra based NGO has written to Arun Jaitely, a Union Finance minister and urged him to roll back the budget cut in minority scholarships.
Azad Yuva Brigade, a Marathwada-based NGO that monitors and handles issues encountered by Muslim students, said in its letter that previous year this budget was Rs. 1040.10 Crore whereas this year it is reduced to Rs. 931 Crore, which is ‘injustice’ and ‘discriminatory’ in nature considering already proven educational and economical backwardness of minority community.
The letter reminds Jaitely to work on PM Modi’s assert of ‘Sabka Sath Sabka Vikas’ and thereby help minority communities in their development, TwoCircles.net reported.
The group has also copied President and Prime Minister of India and handed over the memorandum to divisional Commissioner.
“Many commissions have pointed out educational backwardness of Muslims and have suggested government to come up with different schemes to increase educational level of Muslims but instead of increasing the budget for scholarships to minority students it is decreasing it which is highly condemnable”, told Waseem Siddique, Vice President of Brigade.
“Jaitely ji has cut Rs. 139.2 Crore from this scholarship budget, we have requested him to roll it back and instead increase it by further Rs. 500 Crore so that minority students can benefit in large number”, he added.
The group has also started an online petition and is calling for support by signing it.