Concern over delay of police clearance for passports for applications submitted by minorities

Bangalore, September 8: Undue delays in issue of police clearance certificates for passport applications submitted by minorities, topped a slew of issues raised during an interaction between elected representatives, NGOs, representatives of various forums and National?Commission for Minorities Vice-Chairman H?T?Sangliana in Bangalore on Friday.

Speaking during the interaction, Congress MLA?N?A Harris charged that minorities were facing problems while obtaining police clearance certificates for passports and sought to know the reason for the same. “There is an inordinate delay in police clearance. During my four-and-a-half-year tenure as MLA, only people from minority communities come to me with this problem.?Why cannot minorities be treated on par with others,” he questioned.

Sangliana said he would take up the matter during his internal discussions with top government officials.

Another Congress MLA?Tanveer Sait said government had stipulated that an educational institution should have 75 per cent of students from minority community to be declared a minority institution. Sait said if the norm was followed there would be no minority educational institution in the State and sought the government to relax the norm.

Sait said there was delay in sanctioning of scholarships to minority students. He also urged the government to petition the Centre to enhance the quantum of grants provided as scholarships to minority students.

State Minority Commission chief Anwar Manippady claimed that some minority educational institutions were collecting donations from minority students.

“The privileges being provided to minority institutions is to ensure that they provide quality education for the students. However, by collecting donations from minority students, they are defeating the very purpose of their existence,” he said.

The meeting also discussed the hardships being faced by educational institutions in getting minority status certificate from the State government. Chief Secretary S?V?Ranganath, who was present at the meeting, said efforts would be made to simplify the procedure.

Congress legislator U?T?Khader pointed out that a Cabinet meeting on Thursday had dropped charges on various ABVP?activists, at a time when the same group had attacked a girl for not responding to their college bandh call this week.

Sangliana said he had taken note of the matter and had already discussed the same when he had called on Chief Minister Jagadish?Shettar earlier in the day.

An invitee to the meeting sought that the police officers from the minority communities be deployed in areas with large population of minorities. Sangliana said the commission had already taken programmes for resensitisation of police with respect to minority communities.

Tanveer Sait drew attention to the shortage of staff in the minority welfare department and pointed out that even Cadre and Recruitment (C&R) rules had not been framed. Ranganath said he will attend to the matter on top priority.

Home Secretary V?Umesh, ADGP?(Law and Order) Bipin Gopalkrishna and Minority Department Principal Secretary P?B?Ramamurthy were present.