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What Sachar panel report offers Muslims

November 30, 2006 21:44 IST

Following are the recommendations of the Rajindar Sachar committee report on the social, economic and educational status of the Muslim community in the country tabled in Parliament on Thursday:

Setting up an Equal Opportunity Commission to look into grievances of deprived groups like minorities.
Working out nomination procedure to increase participation of minorities in public bodies.
Providing legal mechanism to address complaints of discrimination against minorities in matters of employment, housing, schooling and obtaining bank loans.
Establishing a delimitation procedure that does not reserve constituencies with high minority population for SCs
Initiating and institutionalising a process of evaluating contents of textbooks to purge them of explicit and implicit material that may impart inappropriate social values, especially religious intolerance.
Creating a national data bank where all relevant data for various socio-religious categories are maintained.
Setting up an autonomous assessment and monitoring authority to evaluate the extent of development benefits, which accrue to different socio-religious categories through various programmes.
Encouraging the University Grants Commission to evolve a system where part of allocation to colleges and universities is linked to diversity in student population.
Facilitating admissions to the most backward amongst all socio-religious categories in regular universities and autonomous colleges and evolving alternate admission criteria

list .5in"> Designating Arzals Muslim group as most backward classes as they need multifarious measures, including rerservation.

Providing Hindu-OBC-type attention to Ajlaf Muslim group.

Providing financial and other support to initiatives built around occupations where Muslims are concentrated and that have growth potential.

Increasing employment share of Muslims, particularly where there is great deal of public dealing.

Working out mechanisms to link madrassas with higher secondary school board.

Recognising degrees from madrassas for eligibility in defence, civil and banking examinations.

Providing hostel facilities at reasonable costs for students from minorities on a priority basis.

Promoting and enhancing access to Muslims in priority sector advances.

Including in teacher training components that introduce importance of diversity and plurality and sensitising teachers towards needs and aspirations of Muslims and other marginalised communities.

Opening high quality Urdu medium schools wherever they are in demand and ensuring high quality textbooks for students in the Urdu language.

Drawing Muslims on relevant interview panels and boards.

Improving participation and share of minorities, particularly Muslims, in business of regular commercial banks.

Setting up a national Wakf development corporation with a revolving corpus fund of Rs 500 crore.

Creating new cadre to deal with specific Wakf affairs.