Assam tables bill to convert madrassas into general schools

GUWAHATI: Assam’s BJP-led coalition government introduced a bill in the Assembly on Monday to convert the state-run madrassas into general educational institutes with effect from the next financial year.

The Assam Repealing Bill, 2020 seeks to repeal the Assam Madrassa Education (Provincialization) Act, 1995 and the Assam Madrassa Education (Provincialization of Services of Employees and Re-Organisation of Madrassa Educational Institutions) Act, 2018.

After the bill’s introduction in the House triggered a protest from opposition parties, Finance Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said the government was not taking any steps to close down or regulate the private madrasas.

“The teachers and the non-teaching staff of the madrasas, provincialised under the two Acts, will not face any difficulties. There is a clause that says notwithstanding such repeal of the Act, anything done or any action taken under the Acts so repealed before the date of commencement of the Repealing Act shall be deemed to have been validly done or taken under the Repeal Act,” Sarma said.

The bill proposed to convert the madrassa institutes into upper primary, high, and higher secondary schools with no change of status and pay, allowances, and service conditions of the teaching and the non-teaching staff.

Madrasa education in Assam, which has over 600 such state-run institutes, was introduced in 1915. The government annually spends Rs 260 crore on the state-run madrasas and the Sanskrit “tols” (Sanskrit-learning centres).

In February this year, the state government said “religious teachings cannot be imparted with government funds in a secular country”.

Assam has 189 high madrassas. Apart from the conventional subjects such as mathematics, science, English, etc, they have a subject on theology which carries 50 marks. The government decided to drop this subject and remove the word “madrasa” from the institutes.

“We’ve taken a historical decision to secularise the state’s education system,” Sarma, who is also the Education Minister, had said recently after the state cabinet had approved the proposal to turn the state-run madrasas into general schools.

The government is also converting 97 state-run Sanskrit “tols” into study centres of Indian history and ancient Indian culture.