BJP MP seeks rollback of Maulana Azad Fellowship for minority students

New Delhi: BJP MP Pritam Munde on Thursday demanded that the Union government should take back its recent decision of doing away with certain scholarships for minority communities.

The Maulana Azad Fellowship for minority students pursuing higher education has been scrapped while the government's pre-matric scholarship for them will no longer apply to students from Class 1 to Class 8.

Raising the issue in the Lok Sabha, Munde said the decision was taken without any prior intimation and this year also, thousands of students had given applications for it.

"I demand that the government should rethink this decision. Education is free in right to education but these (scholarships) work as an encouragement for these students in schools," she said.

"Looking at this issue from the point of view that students are not pushed towards child labour and stay on the path of education, the decision be revoked after a rethink," the MP from Maharashtra's Beed said.