CHENNAI: The minority welfare directorate will now act as the nodal office for conferring minority status on educational institutions and the applications will be scrutinised by the state minorities welfare department through an empowered committee. The move will do away with the need for educational institutions to send applications to multiple departments.
A government order (GO) in this regard said a web portal would be created to ensure transparency and issued guidelines to apply for the minority status. The guidelines state that the institution should have been established by a minority community, must be administered continuously only by the members of that community and its objective should be promoting the community’s interests.
In the case of self-financing institutions imparting professional education, students from only that community should be admitted to 50% of the sanctioned seats. If there is any vacancy, such vacancy (in the 50% seats) should be filled only on the basis of a merit list prepared by a competent authority.
The decision on whether to confer the minority statue on an applicant (an institution) would be based on the total population of the community in the state, not in the particular region where the institution is situated, said the GO.
The minorities welfare directorate would be the nodal office to receive applications seeking minority status for all types of educational institutions such as schools; arts-and-science colleges; technical-education institutions; and agriculture, law and medical colleges. All applications should be received and processed online. After getting it approved from the respective heads of the departments, the minority welfare director will place it before a nine-member empowered committee headed by the chief secretary.
The committee will also have as members the principal secretaries of the backward classes, most backward classes and minorities welfare department; higher education; school education; health and family welfare; agriculture and farmers welfare; animal husbandry and fisheries departments; secretary of the law department; and director of minority welfare department. The panel will meet once every three months to review the status of pending applications.
The committee would also frame and update the consolidated guidelines time to time. The minorities welfare department would be appropriately strengthened to handle the subject. Arul Mary, a high court advocate working with minority educational institutions, said that so far, they had to submit applications at multiple departments, including school education, higher education, health and agriculture departments. “We welcome the decision to bring the process under the minorities welfare department. We urge the government to ensure that the web portal is simple and user-friendly.”