New Delhi: Citing the report of the All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE) 2020-21, the government said in Lok Sabha on Monday that the enrolment of Muslim students has declined by 8% in 2020-21 as compared to 2019-20, and enrolment of Muslim students has declined by 16% in Uttar Pradesh.
This information came in as a written response from Dr Subash Sarkar, Minister of State for Education, while replying to a question from BSP MP Kunwar Danish Ali enquiring whether AISHE has revealed that a decline of 8 per cent in the enrolment of Muslim students for higher education and maximum decline of 36 per cent has been registered in such enrolments in Uttar Pradesh with a 20 per cent Muslim population.
The Union Minister in his reply further said, "However, the enrolment of Muslim students has increased significantly from 17,39,218 to 19,21,713, an increase of 1,82,495 (10.5%) across the country. A notable feature is that Female Muslim students have outnumbered male Muslim students."
On the steps being taken by the government to stop such decline in the above-mentioned enrolments, the MoS in his reply noted that the "government is encouraging minority students through Scholarships/Fellowships Schemes of Ministry of Minority Affairs. Ministry of Minority Affairs implements Pre-Matric, Post-Matric, and Merit-cum-Means based Scholarship Schemes for the educational empowerment of the students belonging to 6 notified Minority communities, namely, Buddhist, Christian, Jain, Muslim, Sikh, and Zoroastrian (Parsi)."
"The objective of the Schemes is to uplift the socio-economic conditions of the minority communities, increase their rate of attainment in higher education and enhance their employability and to enable the poor and meritorious students to pursue Professional and Technical courses. These schemes have been instrumental in ameliorating the enrolment of minority students in educational institutes", he further said.
It is pertinent to note here that last year After restricting the pre-matric scholarship for minority students, the Ministry of Minority Affairs stopped Maulana Azad Fellowship — dedicated to pursuing higher education — to minority students, from 2022-23.
During this year's Budget, the ministry's allocation was cut by as much as 38 per cent, with a massive reduction in the allocation for pre-matric scholarships, which fell from Rs 1,425 crore in 2022-23 to Rs 433 crore in 2023-24.
