UP Government Ends Honorarium to Madrasa Teachers, Move to Adversely Affect 1 Million Students
Asad Razvi | 12 January 2024 | The Wire
Lucknow: After the Union government, the Yogi Adityanath government stopped the honorarium of teachers hired to teach modern subjects in the madrasas of Uttar Pradesh. The state government’s decision will adversely impact the livelihood of nearly 21,000 teachers and the education of nearly one million madrasa-going students.
Many believe that the decision is part of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s majoritarian politics, and it is the second major attack on minority education after withdrawing from the Maulana Azad National Fellowship in 2022. This decision has shocked thousands of teachers who have been persistently protesting for their honorarium for the past four years.
In a bid to impart modern education to madrasa-going students, the Union government appointed over 21,000 teachers in 7,742 madrasas in the state. These teachers were appointed under the prestigious SPQEM (Scheme for Providing Quality Education in Madrasas), which was introduced to modernise the education system in religious schools in 2009.
After the Modi government came back to power for the second time in 2019, the Union government has begun turning a blind eye to this scheme. Earlier, the pro-Hindutva government slashed the budget of SPQEM, and later on, in the financial year 2017-18, the Union government stopped releasing funds for the modern education of madrasa….