Events & Personalities
New rules, higher fees
Educational institutions run by religious and linguistic minority groups to which the state government has accorded minority status will now have to pay increased registration fees. It will also be made mandatory for them to seek permission and ensure fresh registration every time they open a new branch, reported The Indian Express (IE) on August 10, 2015.
Revenue minister Eknath Khadse told the newspaper that "the decision to increase the registration fee is not to earn additional revenue but enforce some regulation to avoid rampant misuse by these education trusts, which have been violating the norms…It has come to our notice that once they avail of the minority tag, they open new colleges and schools without bothering to register. Since they are exempted from regular monitoring, these trusts and institutions have never been questioned in the past… The special category tag is not for rampant commercialization of education.”
The government plans to bring in some guidelines and those not abiding by the new regulations "can be stripped of the minority status. Why should these select institutions get special treatment? They should also conform to the all the rules applicable to non-minority educational trusts and institutions,” the minister told IE.
Among the proposed requirements is that 50% of the students enrolled should be from the minority community for which the school was created (see "Losing minority status,” Events and Personalities, Parsiana, August 7, 2015).
At present 2,472 minority institutions exist of which 1,062 belong to religious minority groups such as Parsis, Jains, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Buddhists, etc, while the rest are run by minority linguistic groups, IE mentioned. The current registration fee is a paltry Rs 500 which the government intends to raise to a minimum of Rs 2,500.
Revenue minister Eknath Khadse told the newspaper that "the decision to increase the registration fee is not to earn additional revenue but enforce some regulation to avoid rampant misuse by these education trusts, which have been violating the norms…It has come to our notice that once they avail of the minority tag, they open new colleges and schools without bothering to register. Since they are exempted from regular monitoring, these trusts and institutions have never been questioned in the past… The special category tag is not for rampant commercialization of education.”
The government plans to bring in some guidelines and those not abiding by the new regulations "can be stripped of the minority status. Why should these select institutions get special treatment? They should also conform to the all the rules applicable to non-minority educational trusts and institutions,” the minister told IE.
Among the proposed requirements is that 50% of the students enrolled should be from the minority community for which the school was created (see "Losing minority status,” Events and Personalities, Parsiana, August 7, 2015).
At present 2,472 minority institutions exist of which 1,062 belong to religious minority groups such as Parsis, Jains, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Buddhists, etc, while the rest are run by minority linguistic groups, IE mentioned. The current registration fee is a paltry Rs 500 which the government intends to raise to a minimum of Rs 2,500.
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