Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav has accused the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party of selectively targeting minority institutions/madrasas after a report by a child rights panel called for stopping state funding of madrasas across the nation. 

The SP president said that the saffron party wanted to do politics over hatred and discrimination.

“This country belongs to everyone; the Constitution gives us the rights. Whatever system has been established by the Constitution, the BJP wants to change it. They are the people who want to do politics over hatred, by creating conflicts between castes and religions. But they won’t succeed; the people of the country, intellectuals of society now understand that the discriminatory politics of the BJP won’t go long,” Akhilesh Yadav said while talking to reporters in Lucknow on Saturday.

“The BJP does everything that spreads hatred in society. If they have a problem with education, they should have taken steps to improve the quality of education. All institutions, whether it is madrasa or any other institution…, if they had the power, they would have closed Sanskrit schools also. They want control, they want to keep everything under their control,” Akhilesh Yadav said.

The SP chief was reacting to a report by the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR), which raised concerns about the functioning of madrasas and called for an end to state funding unless these institutions comply with the Right to Education Act.

The NCPCR on Saturday issued a report titled ‘Guardians of Faith or Oppressors of Rights: Constitutional Rights of Children vs Madrasas’, which discusses the historical role of madrasas along with their impact on children. The NCPCR, in its report, recommended closure of Madrasa Boards and stopping of state funding to them.

NCPCR chief Priyank Kanoongo said the report had been released after an analysis of nine years. He said that children in madrasas were tutored in such a way that they would work according to the motives of certain people.

“The commission has released its final report after studying this issue for nine years. We have found that around 1.25 crore children are deprived of their basic education rights. They are being tutored in such a way that they would work according to the motives of certain people; this is wrong. The people who have captured these madrasas are those who used to say that they wanted to preach Islam across India during India-Pakistan partition. There are madrasa boards in 7-8 states and we have asked to shut the madrasa boards because they failed to serve the purpose... donations are being raised for madrasas,” he added.

The NCPCR report states that while Articles 29 and 30 of the Constitution protect the rights of minorities to preserve their culture and establish educational institutions, these provisions have, in a way, led to discrimination against madrasas students, who miss out on formal education.

The report points out that while the primary focus of madrasas is religious education, many do not provide the essential components of formal education such as adequate infrastructure, trained teachers and proper academic curricula.

The report also cites 2021-22 data of Unified District Information System for Education (UDISE), which states that a large number of Muslim children are out of school, with an estimated 1.2 crore children not receiving formal education.

The report also says there is a lack of accountability in many madrasas, where physical safety concerns, such as poor infrastructure and cases of child rights violations, have been reported.