Government children’s rights organization recommends states to stop financing madrasas, their boards will be dissolved | India News – Times of India

NEW DELHI: Highlighting serious concerns over the functioning of madrasas across the country and their inability to connect Islamic children In general, the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights has written to all states and Union Territories recommending that state funding of madrasas and the boards running them be stopped and the latter be dissolved.

“Madrasas Boards pose multifaceted challenges to the realization of children’s rights, from failure to provide quality education to exclusion from mainstream education to lack of accountability,” says the NCPCR report titled ‘Guardians of Faith or Oppressors of Rights : Constitutional Rights of Children vs. Madrasas. The Commission argues that forming a board or adhering to the Unified District Information System for Education (UDISE) Codes does not mean that the madrasas are following the provisions of the law. Right to Education Act 2009 (RTE).
Recommend that children from the Muslim community attending madrasas should be enrolled formal schoolsThe committee, which has sent its report with the letter to all states, underlined that “religious education should not come at the expense of formal education, which is a fundamental right under the Constitution of India.”
The committee also recommended that all non-Muslim children enrolled in madrasas without the consent of guardians or parents be taken out and admitted to schools to receive basic education. The report points out that Article 28 of the Constitution prohibits the imposition of religious education without the consent of parents or guardians in the case of minors and states that the States/UTs have largely failed to obtain the consent of parents of non-Muslim children for admitting their children attend madrasas.
Data shared by states that have Madrasa Boards showed that there were 9,446 non-Muslim children in madrasas in Madhya Pradesh, followed by Rajasthan (3,103), Chhatisgarh (2,159), Bihar (69) and Uttarakhand (42), making a total of approximately 14,819. The Madrasa Board in Odisha said no non-Muslim students were enrolled and Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal did not provide the data, according to the report.
In the letter to the chief secretaries, NCPCR Chairman Priyank Kanoongo said, “The exemption of religious institutions from the RTE Act led to the exclusion of children who attended only religious institutions from the formal education system, in accordance with RTE.”
“What was intended to empower children ended up creating new layers of hardship and discrimination due to misinterpretation,” Kanoongo added.
NCPCR states that the madrasas are providing at the same time religious education do not follow the principle of secularism. “Also, the examinations conducted by the Board of Madrasa Education and the prescribed books are not in line with the curriculum of NCERT and SCERT, leaving the students of Madrasas behind those who fall within the ambit of RTE,” the report said.
The NCPCR report also drew attention to the need to map the unmapped madrasas in the country. “There are 19,613 recognized madrasas and 4,037 unrecognized madrasas in the country (UDISE+ 2020-21). The number of registrations for recognized Madrasas is 26,93,588 and for unrecognized Madrasas 5,40,744,” it said. “Based on the estimate of 1.1 crore Muslim children out of school and attending madrasas, there could be more than 80,000 unmapped madrasas in the country,” the committee noted with concern.