Officers of the Saharanpur district of Uttar Pradesh have announced the Darul Uloom Deoband, the fatwa-issuing madrassa, to be ‘illegal’ and ‘unrecognized’. The announcement was made on Sunday after submitting the survey report to the government of Uttar Pradesh. The district officers, in their report, declared another 306 unrecognized madrassas to be illegal.
Bharat Lal Gond, district minority welfare officer, said that the information about finding out the 306 illegal madrassas was given out to the administration, and the Darul Uloom Deoband is an illegal madrassa as well, and is deprived of scholarships and other policies. Gond added that during the year of the madrassa’s establishment, it was scrutinized on the basis of the yardsticks set by the administration like the community which ran it, the name of the madrassa, and the source of its income.
As per the report there are 754 madrassas which are registered with the district administration, out of which 664 are till class 5, 80 are till class 8, and the remaining 10 are till class 10. The phenomenon of conducting a survey on Islamic educational centres was commenced in the last month by the Uttar Pradesh government, and 12 factors have been included in the same. The government had made the announcement of conducting a survey to know about students in unrecognized madrassas, the teachers, curriculum, and its relationship with any non-governmental organization.
