Mumbai: The Mahayuti government has directed all educational institutes with minority status to obtain digitally signed status certificates within six months, following concerns over suspicious approvals.
In an order issued as the government resolution (GR), the minority development department secretary Ruchesh Jaiwanshi says that the institutes that have been allotted minority status based on religious or linguistic status before July 2017 from the school education and sports department and the higher and technical education department need to submit their application on Aaple Sarkar web portal.
Post-July 2017, the responsibility for granting minority status shifted to the state minority development department, which transitioned the process from offline to online.
The state has begun verifying the minority status of educational institutions running schools, colleges, and other courses. These institutions, exempt from rules like the Right to Education Act, state reservation policies, and staff recruitment norms, are now under scrutiny to ensure legitimacy of their minority status.
The state government were receiving complaints of its misuse, but the state does not have data on such institutes as they received the status offline, says the GR.
According to sources in Mantralaya, recently it was brought to the notice of the state cabinet that an institute in Yavatmal district was issued the minority status by the competent authority under the state minority development department.
