LUCKNOW: The Yogi Adityanath-led BJP government's decision to cancel recruitment process of 4,000 Urdu teachers which was initiated by the erstwhile Samajwadi Party government, has been taken as a setback to the language by the Muslim clerics.
This recruitment process of Urdu teachers for primary schools was started by Uttar Pradesh Basic Education Board in December 2015 as the then Akhilesh government had announced a total of 16,460 posts for assistant primary teachers in the state. However, their recruitment was put on hold as soon after the BJP came to power in 2017.
Additional Chief Secretary of Basic Education Department Prabhat Kumar said the decision to stop the recruitment process was taken as there were enough Urdu teachers in primary schools and that the additional recruitment wasn't required.
Crying foul over the intentions of the state government, Muslim clerics find this decision as a veiled attack on the Urdu language.
"This step will take the Urdu language backward and will hamper the growth of Urdu teachers," Maulana Khalid Rasheed Farangi Mahali said. Urging the state government to reconsider its decision, the cleric sais that Urdu was like any other Indian language and should not be looked upon only as the language of Muslims.
This is not for the first time the Muslim community is dissatisfied with the BJP government in the state. The Yogi government's decision to register and geo-tag all madrassas across the state through a GPS-based service was met with resentment. Also, the introduction of NCERT syllabus and subjects like science, mathematics and computer science in Madrasa curriculum had also faced initial opposition from the Muslim maulanas.
The state government had made the announcement regarding the recruitment of Urdu teachers in Lucknow recently.
Online application process was started from December 23, 2016, and the applications were submitted till January 2017. The counselling had to take place in March 2017, but during this time, the government of the state changed after the elections.
On March 23, 2017, the Yogi government stopped the recruitment process.
As a result, the candidates went to High Court which directed the Basic Education Department to complete the recruitment process.
The government is planning to file a review petition against the decision of the High Court.