Questioning the scrapping of the Maulana Azad National Fellowship (MANF) and the subsidy on education loans taken by students of minority community to study abroad, former Finance Minister P. Chidambaram on Saturday accused the Narendra Modi government of “displaying its anti-minority policy” as a badge of honour.
In a series of tweets, he called the government move as ‘irrational and arbitrary”. His comments came after the Minority Affairs Minister Smriti Irani, in a written reply this week, told the Lok Sabha that as “the Maulana Azad National Fellowship (MANF) Scheme overlaps with various fellowship schemes for higher education, the government has decided to discontinue the MANF Scheme from 2022-23”.
“The government’s excuse for scrapping the Maulana Azad National Fellowship and the subsidy for education loans to study abroad to minority students is grossly irrational and arbitrary,” said Mr. Chidamabaram in a tweet.
“Even admitting that there are overlapping schemes, is the fellowship and subsidy to minority students the only schemes that overlap with another scheme,” he asked. “MGNREGA overlaps PM KISAN. Old age pension overlaps MGNREGA in the case of old workers. There are dozens of such overlapping schemes,” he said.
“The government is on overdrive to make life more difficult for minority students. [The] Government is openly displaying its anti-minority policy as if it was a badge of honour. Shame,” added the veteran Congress leader.
In her reply to the question in Lok Sabha, Ms. Irani had also said the coverage under the Pre-Matric Scholarship Scheme has been revised from 2022-23 and made applicable for Classes 9 and 10 only as the Right to Education (RTE) Act, 2009, provides free and compulsory elementary education (Classes 1 to 8) to each and every child.
This modification has also been done to harmonise the scheme with identical scholarship schemes implemented by other Central government Ministries, she had noted. “As of now, there is no proposal to restore/re-instate these schemes,” Ms. Irani had said in her reply.
