The on-going tug-of-war between the Congress and the Samajwadi Party to woo the Muslim vote bank before the coming parliamentary election intensified on Thursday as Union Minister of State for Human Resource Development Jitin Prasada charged the State Government with showing least concern for Urdu and stressing that giving due recognition to the language should not be politicised.
Barely 24 hours ago, Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav withdrew the terror charges against some youths of the minority community on Wednesday.
“I am really surprised to learn that even when 104 institutes for development and promotion of Urdu language and imparting job-oriented skills are running in Uttar Pradesh, the Samajwadi Party Government has so far not recognised their courses,” said Prasada while taking on the State Government for it’s “step-motherly treatment” to one of the richest language of the society.
Speaking at the inaugural session of a two-day seminar on promotion of Urdu here on Thursday, Prasada said that no one should play politics on the promotion of Urdu and giving it its due recognition.
“I will personally find out why the UP Government has so far not given recognition to the courses (run by Urdu institutes),” the Union Minister of State said, while asking all political parties not to play politics on this issue as it concerned the welfare of youths of all communities and religion.
Highlighting the importance of Urdu, Prasada said the language had played an important role during the freedom struggle and now Bollywood and the television industry was using the richness of the language in songs and dialogues.
So far the courses taken by the Union HRD Ministry through the National Council for Promotion of Urdu language (NCPUl) and National Institute of Electronics and Information Technology (NIElIT) have been recognised by Andaman and Nicobar, Bihar, Delhi, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal.
He, however, felt that Urdu should not be left only for entertainment but should be used in developing job-oriented courses to provide livelihood to more and more youths as the Central government had done under a joint programme of NCPUl and NIElIT.
“It is not important how many (youth) took up the courses conducted by the NCPUl and the NIElIT and cleared them, what matters is how many got livelihood out of it,” Prasada said while asking the officers to concentrate on job-oriented courses.
Speaking on the priorities of the United Progressive Alliance government, Prasada said that both Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and UPA chairperson and Congress chief Sonia Gandhi wanted the HRD Ministry to help the down-trodden and poor sections of society so that they became self-dependant.
Noted Urdu poet Waseem Barelvi, who is also vice-chairman of the NCPUl, lauded the steps taken up by the Central government for the development of Urdu. He stressed the need to make Urdu not just the language of one community but of every Indian.
In his keynote address, Zaheer Kazi, professor of the country’s top minority institution Ayuman Ismal, disclosed how the members of his institution excelled in each and every field and not just Urdu.
“Seventeen students of my institute won gold medal in Mumbai University out of the total 52 awarded,” he said while asking the minorities not to allow any government to use them as vote banks.
Welcoming the guests, NCPUl director Khawaja Ekramudeen said they were working on degree and diploma courses in technical and other fields to cater to the seven lakh jobs opportunities that the Confederation of Indian Industries expects to open by 2022.