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...

Misleading data cited in a seminar paper on the situation of the minority community in the State tend to detract from the Left Front government's exceptional record on this count. Abusaleh Shariff, the Chief Economist of the National Council of Applied Economic Research, who was the Member-Secretary of the Sachar Committee, presented a paper on the socio-economic development of Muslims in West Bengal, at a seminar organised by the Institute of...

Social exclusion of children belonging to marginalised groups and barriers to children's access to their rights-based entitlements were highlighted as crucial issues confronting the society at a workshop on children's rights here recently. Activists said children being forced to work as labourers was an “abysmal failure” of all institutions.The day-long workshop was organised jointly by Save the Children, Prayatna, Society for All Round Developemnt (SARD), Consumer Unity and Trust Society...

Some say it is draconian, others want issue settled amicably The exclusion of madrasa education from the ambit of the Right to Education Act, 2009, has split the Muslim community — between those who see the law as “draconian” and “anti-Muslim” and those who want the controversy settled sensibly, without recourse to anger and agitation. The issue came into focus recently with Mahmood Madani of the Jamiat Ulama-e-Hindi describing the Act as...

Many students are starving in almost 4,000 madrasas of Madhya Pradesh as only half of them get mid-day meals. There are 1 lakh madrasa students in Madhya Pradesh who are not being served mid-day meals. Madhya Pradesh has over 4,000 madrasas with over 2 lakh students and only half of them get mid-day meals. "We do not get the mid-day meal. Our caretaker has to beg for donations and than we are served...