Making it easier for educational institutions to get the minority tag, the Department of Primary and Secondary Education has tweaked the eligibility criteria to set up minority education institutions.
The older rules required a school to have 25% of the total number of students in an academic year belonging to a religious or linguistic minority community. But, the Karnataka Educational Institutions (Recognition of minority educational institutions terms and conditions) draft rules issued on Monday state that the institution can have 25% students belonging to any religious or linguistic minority community.
The other criterion of two-thirds of the management members having to be from a particular minority community remains unchanged.
As of now, there are 1,873 religious minority institutions and 248 linguistic minority institutions across the State. With this move, several institutions will have a chance to get the minority tag as they fill up 25% of seats from different minority communities.
Explaining how this benefits institutions, a Department of Public Instruction official said, “Earlier, we received applications from institutions that claimed to be a Malayali minority institution. But, they did not show 25% students from the same community, so they failed to be accorded the minority status. The same schools can now show 15% of their students from the Malayali community, 5% from Telugu community, and 5% from the Urdu community, and still be called a minority institution.”
Move opposed
The move has been met with criticism from the Opposition as well as minority communities. D.Z. Gulshad Ahmed, president of the Karnataka Unaided Minorities Schools Management Association, said the new eligibility criterion will be “misused” by school managements to get minority status. “If a school is a Muslim minority institution, it should have at least 25% of students from that community. If not, how does the community benefit?” he said.
Academics also pointed out that the new rules would help a large number of schools “escape” from reserving 25% of their seats for students from weaker and disadvantaged backgrounds under the RTE Act.
Justifying the move, Primary and Secondary Education Minister Tanveer Sait said the population of linguistic minority communities was less and the move would benefit institutions run by them.
