Centre to make affiliation and geo tagging compulsory for madrassas

New Delhi: The Central Government is going ahead with a plan to restructure madrassas across the country in order to upgrade them under Scheme to Provide Quality Education in Madrasas (SPQEM). Ministry of Human Resource and Development (MHRD) plans making affiliation of madrassas with Madrassa Board or state boards compulsory.

Officials concerned in MHRD said that the department is studying the proposals submitted by the state governments and will revamp the religious institutions.

SPQEM aims to upgrade the quality of madrassa education and make the students competent for mainstream subjects.

The department has prepared guidelines, to enable the madrassas function like schools, which will be gazetted after approval.

Modernisation of madrassas, encouraging the students for acquiring professional skills and imparting mainstream education are the goals of SPQEM.

The government also plans to locate the madrassas across the country through Global Positioning System (GPS). For this, unique identification will be made mandatory for madrassas.

The ministry had asked madrassas to hand over their location information included in the scheme. Salaries of the teachers of the institutions which failed to submit such information was delayed.

The scheme also proposes to make the teachers capable of teaching science, mathematics, language and social science by increasing their honorarium.

However, it has been pointed out that the move to make the affiliation of madrassas mandatory is an encroachment on their autonomy.