New Delhi: Congress member K Suresh referred to the Narendra Modi administration's decision to abolish the Maulana Azad National Fellowship (MANF) scheme as "anti-minority" and claimed that it will prevent impoverished students from minority communities from accessing higher education.
The Congress member brought up the matter in the Lok Sabha during Zero Hour and added that the end of the fellowship programme will negatively affect students from the Muslim, Buddhist, Jain, Christian, Parsi, and Sikh communities' ability to pursue higher education across all of India.
"The move is an insult to Maulana Azad. It also disregards all the freedom fighters and their memories of sacrifice," he charged.
"So far, students from these six notified minority communities received financial assistance for pursuing higher education under the scheme which covers all the institutions recognised by the University Grants Commission," he said.
"With the discontinuation of the scheme, higher education will become inaccessible to underprivileged students from the six notified minority communities," Suresh added.
The MANF scheme for the minority community students pursuing higher education has been scrapped while the government's pre-matric scholarship for them will no longer apply to students from Class 1 to Class 8.
In a written reply to a question recently in the Lok Sabha, Minority Affairs Minister Smriti Irani said the government provided fellowships for higher education through various schemes, including the MANF, implemented by different ministries or departments.
All these schemes, except the Maulana Azad National Fellowship, are open for candidates of all communities, including minorities, but the data of fellowship distributed among minority students is included only under the Maulana Azad National Fellowship scheme, she said.
"Since the MANF scheme overlaps with various other fellowship schemes for higher education being implemented by the government and minority students are already covered under such schemes, hence the government decided to discontinue the MANF Scheme from 2022-23," Irani had said.
Congress member Suresh termed the reason cited by the minister for discontinuation of the MANF as an "excuse" and said it defies the logic as any overlap could have been identified from the Aadhaar and other documents of the students applying for the fellowship under the scheme.
"The Anti minority sentiments behind the (government's) decision is evident," he charged.
With PTI inputs