Minority edu institutions misusing autonomy: RSS outfit

Many minority run educational institutions have misused the privilege of autonomy granted to them by the Constitution, feels an RSS affiliated body, which is now considering legal options to change the criterion that defines such institutions.
The Bhartiya Shikshan Mandal, an RSS body working in the field of education, also seeks setting up of a "statutory autonomous authority" comprising largely of educationists and teachers for regulating teaching in the country.
Speaking at a press interaction here, Mukul Kanitkar, joint organising secretary of the Mandal, said that minority institutions were given autonomy so that the spread of education among these communities would increase.

"But there are many minority institutions whose management comprises minorities but among students the number of majority community is more. Despite that, they don't implement RTE, they don't implement government's public welfare policies. Such misuse has happened," he told reporters.
He said that the criterion for defining minority institutions should be on the basis of the number of students studying rather that who is in the management.
"We think it should be so, and are considering taking legal recourse in the Supreme Court in this matter," he added.

He had been asked to elaborate on comments made in "draft outline" for education prepared by the Mandal saying that Constitution has provided minorities with special autonomy to set up and govern their institutions but many of them had misused this privilege.

Kanitkar told reporters that the Mandal had prepared this "draft outline" after receiving feedback from 4,000 teachers and educationists all over the country and after receiving more feedback, the suggestions would be sent to the Centre and state governments.
Kanitkar said the draft proposes an independent, autonomous education commission for supervising and controlling all aspects of the educational system and its units should be set up in all districts.
65 to 75 per cent of its members should be from the field of education and rest from other fields like industry, social workers, bureaucracy, etc, he said.