Member of Parliament from Hyderabad Asaduddin Owaisi today (2 December) asked a question in Parliament if the Central government hired more than 50,000 teachers to teach in madrassas under its Madrassas Modernization Scheme in 16 States including Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand and how the expenditure incurred under the scheme for these teachers was shared between the Centre and States.

Union Minister for Minority Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi informed that the government is implementing SPEMM, Scheme for Providing Education to Madrassas/Minorities (earlier implemented by the Education Ministry till FY2021). The scheme comprises of two parts - Scheme for Providing Quality Education in Madarsas (SPQEM) and Infrastructure Development in Minority Institutions (IDMI).

Under the former, the Centre provides financial assistance to encourage madrassas and maktabs to introduce modern education through subjects such as Science, Mathematics, Social Studies, Hindi and English in their curriculum while in the latter, the focus is to augment and strengthen school infrastructure in Minority institutions.

Being a Centrally Sponsored Scheme, it is funded in 90:10 ratio by Centre and States (for North-eastern States, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir and Uttarakhand), fully funded by Centre for Union Territories without legislature and in 60:40 proportion for the rest.

The Ministry in its reply said that the government is providing an honorarium up to Rs. 6,000 per month for Graduate Teacher and up to Rs 12,000 per month for Graduate with B.Ed./Post Graduate/Post Graduate with B.Ed. for maximum of three teachers per madrassa. However, the scheme does not provide for a cadre or regular appointment.

Though it didn’t clarify if the figure of 50,000 teachers mentioned by Owaisi is right or wrong, it said that the government has released Rs 520 crore in the last five years (2016-17) under the scheme including the honorarium for madrassa teachers.

The minister stated that the onus of scheme‘s implementation is on state governments. Once the proposals are approved by the state-level committees and submitted to the Centre’s Project Approval Board, they are considered on their merit. Only then, the amount is released in instalments.

“For the year 2021-22, proposals have been received for honorarium of teachers from the States of Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Tripura, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh, which have been considered by the Project Approval Board of the Ministry, and the proposals for honorarium of teachers in the eligible Madarsas as per scheme guidelines have been approved,” Naqvi replied in his answer to Owaisi’s starred question.