-IANS   West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, unveilinging scholarships and sops for the state's minorities, on Saturday accused the previousLeft government of sowing confusion by announcing a "hurried and erroneous" quota in government jobs for Muslims. Addressing a programme organised by the West Bengal Minorities Development and Finance Corporation, Banerjee declared that loans totalling Rs.82 crore will be given this year to the minorities, besides scholarships and stipends worth Rs.122 crore. "This...

The Supreme Court is set to deliver a decision on a constitutional challenge by private schools Private schools around the country are waiting for the Supreme Court to issue a judgement in a constitutional challenge to a 15-month-old law that enforces free and compulsory education as a fundamental right, after hearing was concluded last week. The government, through the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009, or RTE, had...

Darool Uloom Deoband's new Vice-Chancellor Maulana Abul QasimNomani has said that the Islamic seminary will oppose theRight to Free and Compulsory Education. Speaking at a programme organised by the Jamiat Ulama-e-Hind in Delhi on Thursday, Nomani described the Right to Education as an attack on the sovereignty of madarsas and other Minority institutions. The Human Resource Development Ministry, however, described these apprehensions as baseless. "The seminary will strongly protest the...

Terming the Right to Education Act as an "attack" on the sovereignty of madarsas and other Minority institutions, Islamic seminary Darul Uloom Deoband today said it will oppose it. "The seminary will strongly protest the move to snatch rights of madarsas through RTE and it is with the All India Muslim Personal Law Board, which is already opposing it," newly-appointed vice-chancellor Maulana Abul Qasim Nomani told PTI. He said the Act poses...

The Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council (NAC) — at the initiative of which the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme was rolled out in UPA-I — is taking a fresh look at how to strengthen it. The NAC wants the scheme to move from its “relief work mode” to one that would blend “natural resources and labour to build productive assets.” When the NAC meets here on Thursday, the Deep...