GANDHINAGAR: In a ray of hope to Gujarat's minorities, chief minister Narendra Modi is learnt to be reconsidering his earlier decision not to provide Government of India-sponsored pre-matriculation scholarship to more than 52,000 students belonging to Muslim, Christian, Parsi, Sikh and Buddhist communities.
A senior minister in the Modi government told TOI on condition of anonymity that the CM is "now open" to giving scholarship and may reach a decision at an "opportune moment."
The minister said, "The matter has been discussed at the highest level. The CM believes that he had taken a particular view three years ago at the National Development Council meeting in Delhi in December 2007, where he declared that scholarship to the minority students was discriminatory against other backward sections of society. Now, he wants to get out of the open stance he had taken and is searching for a way out."
The minister claimed he is already in talks with several minority leaders, advising them that they should make "proper representation" to Modi to implement these scholarships and announce other minority welfare schemes. "If they meet the CM, under the new circumstances, he will surely oblige. The CM wants to overcome his anti-minority image. There should, of course, be some assurance from minority leaders to support him", the minister underlined.
An official note, dated March 9, 2011, prepared by the state social justice and empowerment department, meanwhile, said that the Central government began with the minority scholarship scheme in 2007 envisaging 25 per cent state government share without consulting Gujarat. Calling the GoI's scholarship scheme "discriminatory", the note says, Gujarat government was implementing a non-discriminatory scheme providing its own scholarship scheme funded from state coffers.
Under the state scheme, apart from minorities, economically and socially backward classes, SC and ST students - together numbering at 62.97 lakh - were getting scholarship and state government has shelled out Rs 69.97 crore for this. Currently only those minority students get scholarship whose families earn less than Rs 11,000 per annum. "Gujarat government has ensured that minority students get better educational facilities than their counterparts in the country", the note emphasises.