Lucknow: The Uttar Pradesh government has claimed to have identified nearly 13000 illegal madrassas (Islamic seminaries) built with foreign funding in the districts of the state bordering Nepal, sources said.
It is learnt that the claim has been made by the Special Investigation Team set up by the Yogi Adityanath led Uttar Pradesh government in its report submitted to the government in this regard.
In the report, the SIT has recommended the Uttar Pradesh government to close alleged illegal madrassas. According to the SIT report, the madrassas are spread in districts including Maharajganj, Shravasti and Bahraich. The average number of such madrassas in each border district is more than 500, the report said.
If sources are to be believed, the SIT has claimed in its report that these madrassas have been built with the money received from Gulf countries in the last two decades. When details of their income and expenditure were asked from the respective managements of the accused madrassas, they failed to provide the details, the report said.
It is suspected that the money collected as part of a well-planned conspiracy was sent through Hawala for the construction of the said madrassas.
The report said that most of the madrassas in their reply to the government have claimed to have constructed the seminaries with the donated money, but could not tell the names of the donors. According to the SIT report, out of 23,000 madrassas, 5 ,000 have documents of temporary recognition.
After initial investigation, the SIT had expressed apprehension of funding of around Rs 100 crore in madrassas located in border areas. Following the SIT claim, the UP government had given instructions to probe the funding of all the madrassas.
The Yogi government had recently conducted a survey of madrassas running in the state. The survey revealed that there are 16,513 recognized madrassas in the state of which 8,500 are unrecognized.
Minister of State Danish Azad Ansari and Madrasa Board Chairman Iftikhar Javed say that they will be able to comment on the matter only after going through the SIT report.
