Minority Welfare Funds Cut By 38% In Budget: Congress

Former minister and senior Congress leader Mohammed Ali Shabbir strongly condemned the BJP government at the Centre for slashing the funds for the welfare of minority communities by over 38% in the union budget presented in the Lok Sabha today.

Reacting to the budget speech, Shabbir Ali said that the BJP government had reduced the allocation for minorities' welfare from Rs 5,020.5 crore in 2022-23 to Rs 3,097.6 crore in 2023-24, a cut of Rs 1,922.90 crore or nearly 38%.

"Is this a reflection of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's slogan Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas?" he asked, and accused the BJP government at the Centre of crushing the minorities socially, educationally and economically by cutting funds for their welfare.

Shabbir Ali said that the Modi government had been systematically targeting the schemes meant for the economic and educational empowerment of poor minority citizens.

"The BJP government has scrapped the pre-matric scholarship for minorities for students of classes 1-8 hitting lakhs of poor students. Similarly, the Nai Udaan Scheme, meant to help minority candidates prepare for the preliminary examinations conducted by the union and state public services commissions, has also been scrapped. The Maulana Azad National Fellowship for higher education too was scrapped in December of last year. In the budget for 2023-24, the Modi government has reduced the budget for schemes under skill development and livelihoods from Rs 491.91 crore in 2022-23 to just Rs 64.4 crore in 2023-24, a cut of nearly 83%.

He added that the budget for skill development initiatives had been reduced from Rs 235.41 crore to just Rs 10 lakh; for Nayi Manzil, the integrated educational and livelihood initiative, from Rs 46 crore to Rs 10 lakh; for Upgrading Skills and Training in Traditional Arts/Crafts for Development (USTTAD) from Rs 47 crore to Rs 10 lakh; and for Scheme for Leadership Development of Minority Women from Rs 2.5 crore to Rs 10 lakh.

Further, the equity contribution to the National Minorities Development and Finance Corporation (NMDFC) had been reduced from Rs 159 crore in 2022-23 to just Rs 61 crore in 2023-24, Shabbir Ali said.

Shabbir Ali said that the UPA-led Congress governments had originally established a separate Ministry for Minority Affairs in 2006. Since then, the budgetary allocations for the ministry had increased rapidly under the UPA regimes, starting from Rs 144 crore and touching Rs 3,531 crore. However, the BJP government had made meagre allocations to the ministry every year, which barely kept pace with the inflation. Further, not even 60% of the allocated amounts were spent.

He said that a lot of hype had been created when the Centre had allocated Rs 5,020.5 crore in the 2022-23 budget. But the Modi government had silently reduced the amount to Rs 2,612 crore in the Revised Estimates. And this year's budget (Rs 3,097 crore) was lesser than that of even 2012-13, when Rs 3,155 crore were allocated, he said.

"PM Modi talks about Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas and Sabka Vishwas, and he plans to achieve it by targeting the minorities by slashing budgetary allocations for their welfare. This is utter injustice and not acceptable," he said.