Three members of the State Minority Commission on Tuesday wrote to Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath requesting him to instruct all recognised madrasas to record all educational details in Hindi apart from Urdu.
In the letter, the commission members — Rumana Siddiqui, Sardar Parvinder Singh and Kunwar Iqbal Haider— claimed that during their recent visits to madrasas in different districts, they found “several anomalies” in the registers.
Rumana Siddiqui, who was the president of state BJP’s minority wing, said, “Urdu translators are there in the commission, but they do not accompany us when we go somewhere.”
The letter (in Hindi) read, “This is regarding seeking your cognisance that we members had visited recognised and aided madrasas in different districts and found several anomalies in them. We found the names of teachers and students in the attendance registers were in Urdu and not in the national language Hindi. In such conditions, we members are facing problems understanding the actual situation. Because of the details being in Urdu we neither understood the names of the teachers nor the details of the students. In such a condition, possibility of names of majority of students and the teachers being fake is high. We find ourselves unable to take cognizance of the anomalies and resolve them.”
Demand a first; Madrasa board says no such problem
The letter further reads, “Given that Hindi is our national language, it would be better if, in order to bring transparency, all the details in all the madrasas are available in Hindi also. Therefore, the Uttar Pradesh Minority Commission requests you to give orders to officers concerned that educational details of all madrasas are submitted in Hindi besides Urdu.”
However, a senior office bearer at the commission said, “It is the responsibility of the Madrasa Board to check this information (in recognised madrasas). For unrecognised madrasas, there is the Waqf Board.”
Chairman of the commission Tanveer Haider Usmani denied having knowledge of the letter.
State Minority Welfare Minister Lakshmi Narain Chaudhary also said that he had no information about the same, but added that the members had taken the “right step”.
