Raising concern about the condition of minorities in the State, senior Legislator Abdur Razzak Mollah asked in the Assembly on Friday whether the government was aware of a recent status report on Muslims in the State published by Social Network for Assistance to People (SNAP) and certain other organisations.
In the question hour, Mr. Mollah said the report pointed out that the Muslims in the State are lagging in education sector and about 75 per cent of the people of the community make a living by indulging in physical labour.
Replying to the question, Md Ghiyassudin Molla, Minister of State for Minority Affairs and Madrasah Education, said he was not aware of any such report. But, the Minister claimed that the State government had done a lot for the minorities following the recommendations of Sachar Committee.
Speaking to The Hindu later in the day, Mr. Mollah said the findings of the report pointed out that the condition of Muslims had deteriorated more since the Sachar Committee report came out. “The report says a large population of the Muslim community are illiterate and only a fraction attends primary education and of them only a few make it to higher education.”
The Hindu had published the contents of the 77-page report earlier this month, which stated that 52 per cent of the Muslims in Bengal ‘do not study beyond primary level’.
The report also said only 17 per cent of Muslims in the State live in urban settlements against the national average of 28 per cent. “Over 90 per cent of rural Muslims are Bengali-speaking, and only a tiny section reported Urdu to be their mother tongue,” the report said. About 83 per cent of West Bengal’s nearly 2.5-crore Muslims live in non-urban areas.
The Sachar Committee report that had highlighted the poor presence of Muslims in government jobs, had become a major political issue during the erstwhile Left Front government. It is believed in the political circles that the findings of Sachar Committee became one of the reasons for the shift of political loyalty of the Muslims from the Left to the Trinamool Congress.
