New Delhi: Union Minority Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju on Thursday hit again at persistent criticism of the Modi authorities’s failure to guard minorities, citing that the ministry’s funds has doubled prior to now 12 years. Nonetheless, he additionally acknowledged that there are gaps within the provision of scholarships and the lag in digitization of waqf properties.
Talking on the ministry’s ‘Reform Utsav’ (the primary occasion organized by the Union ministry to mark the twelfth anniversary of the Modi authorities) on the Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi, Rijiju mentioned the annual funds for minority affairs has elevated from Rs 1,949 crore in 2014 to Rs 4,115 crore now, a rise of 111 per cent.
“Give me an instance of somebody who left India as a result of they felt unsafe due to their id or non secular background,” Rijiju mentioned immediately. Declare that minorities face persecution beneath the rule of the Bharatiya Janata Get together; “What number of refugees elsewhere have migrated to Europe due to issues in their very own nations? However not one has left India due to non secular persecution.”
This assertion has been met with deep-rooted criticism each domestically and internationally. For instance, Human Rights Watch mentioned in its World Report 2024 that the Bharatiya Janata Get together-led authorities’s insurance policies are “resulting in elevated violence in opposition to minorities and creating an surroundings of widespread concern.”
Equally, the U.S. Fee on Worldwide Non secular Freedom mentioned in the identical 12 months that India’s non secular freedom scenario “continues to deteriorate,” citing the federal government’s failure to deal with mass violence affecting Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, and Dalits.
For home opposition events, minority rights have turn into a central level of assault. Congress chief Rahul Gandhi has repeatedly claimed that the Bharatiya Janata Get together is in opposition to Dalits, minorities and the poor. The Indian bloc, fashioned forward of the 2024 basic elections, had vowed to defeat so-called “manufactured hatred and violence in opposition to minorities.” In the meantime, the Bharatiya Janata Get together accused the Congress of training minority appeasement and communal politics.
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“Please do not unfold false info”
Rijiju blamed the disconnect between authorities information and public notion on a one-sided media surroundings and political campaigns geared toward tarnishing the nation’s picture overseas. Talking on to the opposition on Thursday, he mentioned: “Please do not lie and do not unfold misinformation.” “It is okay to criticize the federal government and criticize its insurance policies. However please do not lie.”
He mentioned some political leaders had been making an attempt to weaken Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s place by damaging the nation’s picture overseas. “Some political leaders in India assist the marketing campaign.”
Requested why the ministry had not executed extra to counter the sense of persecution felt inside ethnic minority communities, Rijiju mentioned, “The federal government plans hundreds of help packages day-after-day. However excellent news is just not information, and unhealthy information is huge information.”
The ministry’s director-general, Srivatsa Krishna, framed the problem as one in every of information and consciousness. “Have a look at the info. Is that this authorities hostile to minorities? When roads are constructed, when coaching is carried out, is it geared toward majority communities?”
The ministry’s third-term mission is to “reform, implement, rework and inform,” and mentioned the final half stays essentially the most troublesome.
One of many flagship packages of the ministry is Prime Minister Vikas (Pradhan Mantri Virasat Ka Samvardhan). That is vocational coaching for ethnic minority youth in every little thing from tailoring to electronics restore.
At Thursday’s occasion, the ministry signed an settlement with Exstep Basis, co-founded by Infosys co-founder and Aadhaar architect Nandan Nilekani, to leverage synthetic intelligence to match PM Vikas graduates with jobs near residence, in order that trainees would not have emigrate to far-flung cities for jobs.
The ministry additionally demonstrated an AI chatbot constructed with Gnani and Sarvam, two government-backed sovereign AI corporations, that may reply questions in regards to the ministry’s plans in a number of languages. Full rollout is anticipated to happen inside six months.
task
On the Waqf Portal, a centralized digital register launched a 12 months in the past beneath the Waqf Modification Act, 2025, which mandates all state Waqf boards to add particulars of properties held in non secular trusts, Rijiju mentioned round 50-55 per cent of properties have been uploaded up to now.
Gaps in documentation are slowing progress, he mentioned. “There are locations which have hundreds of acres on paper, however that is not the case on the bottom. It is onerous work. It is sure to occur.”
The Waqf Modification Act has been one of the vital controversial legislative measures of the Modi authorities’s third time period, handed amid protests and criticism from Islamic teams and opposition events who referred to as it an assault on the property rights of minorities.
Additional, on the problem of scholarships, which is the ministry’s largest funds merchandise protecting pre-matriculation, post-matriculation and merit-cum-financial help to college students from Muslim, Christian, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain and Parsi communities, Rijiju admitted that the plan is being hampered by ongoing CBI instances in a number of states involving large-scale fraud in disbursements to minority academic establishments the place scholarships had been drawn within the names of non-existent college students. “I want the scholarship incident had by no means occurred. No matter occurred, I hope it ends rapidly so we will transfer ahead,” he mentioned, calling it an “unfinished enterprise.”
Concerning the Munambam dispute in Kerala, the place a number of Christian farmers on the coast close to Kochi are preventing to be evicted after the state Wakf Board claimed possession of about 400 acres of land the place they’ve lived and farmed for generations, Rijiju mentioned the legislation ministry was trying into the matter.
The incident has turn into a flashpoint, with the state authorities and the Waqf Board on one aspect and farmers supported by native Bharatiya Janata Get together and Catholic Church leaders on the opposite. “Our intention is that nobody needs to be subjected to unfair remedy or undergo by the hands of state authorities,” Rijiju mentioned.
(Edited by Manat Chu)
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