The Department of Public Instruction (DPI) has brought out a list of 255 unaided schools and 32 aided schools (in Bidar) that will not come under the purview of the Right to Education (RTE) Act for having minority certificates.
The revised, consolidated list of minority institutions has been uploaded on the DPI website www.schooleducation.kar.nic.in at a time when the High Court is hearing a petition challenging the government’s decision to define a minority institution as one having more than 75 per cent of students belonging to a minority community.
However, DPI has clarified that the revised list has not been drawn up on the challenged definition. “This list is based on the existing way of defining minority, where the number of minority students in a school should be equal to or more than the percentage of minority population in the area,” said an official from the Urdu and Other Minority Linguistic Schools section.
The official also clarified that the list contains the names of those schools that will not come under the purview of the RTE Act. The DPI’s had previously identified 1,059 schools with minority status certificates. “The old list contained all schools, including high schools. The new list comprises of primary schools.”
C R Mohammed Imtiaz, chairperson, Karnataka State Minorities Educational Institutions Managements Federation, said there are more than 6,000 minority schools in the state, with close to 3,000 in Bangalore alone.
Commenting on the new list, Imtiaz said, “They are playing with us as they do not have full details. A certificate is not necessary. The registrations of trusts under the Societies Act is enough, where it is already established that members of the trust are either religious or linguistic minorities,” he said.
Imtiaz added that the State government was not the authority to issue certificate of minority status to CBSE and ICSE schools. “It is the National Commission for Minority Educational Institutions that can issue certificates to CBSE and ICSE schools.”