Maulana Azad Education Foundation Closure: Are We Moving Back To The Centralization?Recently, a Two-judge Delhi High Court bench of Acting Chief Justice Manmohan and Justice Mini Pushkarna reserved an order on a plea against the winding up of Maulana Azad Education Foundation (MAEF). The court was hearing the petition filed by Syeda Saiyidain Hameed (Grandniece of Maulana Azad), John Dayal, and Daya Singh against the February 7 order of the Ministry of Minority Affairs. The ministry instructed to carry out the closure procedure of MAEF at the earliest and submit a closure certificate copy issued by the Registrar of Societies of the Delhi government.
The ministry, according to reports, issued an order about a proposal received from the Central Waqf Council on January 21 to close the Foundation.
The government representative in the court contended that the foundation had become ‘obsolete’ at a time when there was a dedicated Ministry of Minority Affairs that was holistically executing schemes for minorities.
Reportedly, petitioners argued that the ministry’s order not only deprives the deserving students especially girls from availing the benefits of the scheme of the MAEF through an arbitrary procedure.
What do we know about the Maulana Azad Education Foundation?
Maulana Azad Education Foundation is a non-political, non-profit organization established in 1989, to promote education amongst the educationally backward minorities and other weaker sections. The minister of minority affairs in the union ministry is the ex-officio President of the Foundation.
As per the information furnished by MAEF through an RTI, since its inception, the foundation’s corpus fund has been accrued to Rs.1362.00 crore. This corpus fund remains intact and invested in banks and other financial institutions and the interest gained on this amount is used for implementation of the schemes run by the foundation. The MAEF informs that annually an income of approx. Rs. 110 crores is generated on the corpus amount. “The Government of India does not provide any recurring grant every year to the foundation. It gives grants to the foundation only for augmentation of its corpus dund,” the foundation said.
The Foundation also receives donations towards its corpus fund from corporations in the form of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). It had received donations from Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd. (HPCL, Rs.5.00 lakh), Steel Authority of India Ltd. (SAIL, Rs.2.00 lakh) and IDBI Bank Ltd. (Rs.5.00 lakh), MAEF informed in the RTI.
How the MAEF is supporting the education of minorities and other weaker sections?
According to the information, since its formation till March 2023, the Foundation has sanctioned a grant-in-aid of Rs.221.64 crore to 1673 NGOs for various educational initiatives. Till March 2022, it has also sanctioned Scholarships amounting to nearly Rs.884.87 crore to 12,88,954 girls. The Foundation also provides a Grant in Aid to NGOs Scheme for the infrastructure development of institutions run by NGOs in the education field. The Gharib Nawaz, Employment Scheme provides quality skill training to minority dropout students. For the year 2023-24, the budget outlay was 155.92 crore.
The foundation through the ‘Begum Hazrat Mahal National Scholarship Scheme provided support to meritorious minority girls students; however, the scheme has been subsumed by the Ministry of Minority Affairs.
The Foundation informed that it has been conducting an evaluation study of Schemes through independent agencies to ensure transparency.
What are the concerns about the Centre government’s decision?
The government’s decision towards winding up the foundation has been driven by the fact that schemes worth crores of rupees have already been introduced in the domain under the MAEF. It also argued that out of a total of 1,600 projects initiated by the foundation, 523 projects are still incomplete and several irregularities have also been observed in the functioning.
However, is this justified to give a closure order to an organization that is working on the ground level and working as an assistant hand to the government body? Instead of promoting more decentralization of policy implementation through institutions, taking away the resources back to the central ministry’s hand is not the right move as it will lead to more centralized tendencies in the system.
Irregularities and incomplete projects can be rectified through more vigilance but this can never be the sole reason to take away the prospective benefit given to the thousands of young girls and boys who could not reach the central help every time because of the lack of resources or proper information.
The decision also set a precedent for the minority-managed schools running on the state government finances.