Congress writes to minorities panel to probe madrasa demolition in Assam

|HT|

Congress leaders from Assam wrote to the National Commission for Minorities (NCM) on Tuesday, urging it to investigate the demolition of a madrasa in Assam’s Bongaigaon area and ensure justice for its 224 students.

In a letter to the NCM chairperson Iqbal Singh Lalpura, Congress MP Abdul Khaleque and MLAs Pradip Sarkar, Abdur Rashid Mondal, Asif Nazar and Abdul Batin Khandakar alleged the state government demolished the Markazul Ma-Arif Quariayana Madrassa in Bongaigaon “in blatant disregard to the rule of law”.

The Congress legislators in their letter, said that the district administration did not give enough time to the 224 residential students of the madrasa, of whom most were minors, to vacate the premises.

“The students had to vacate in the middle of the night, and had no shelter as most of them came from far-off places,” they said.

They also alleged in the letter that it was an act of inhumanity towards these students and such an unlawful action denied them the right to education.

The letter added the madrasa had received permission from the panchayat for its construction.

The Congress MPs and MLAs noted that the madrasa had been demolished after a teacher of the educational institution was arrested for allegedly being linked with terror groups.

The Congress leaders claimed in their letter that, “the arrested teacher has already been suspended and the madrassa management had extended full cooperation to the investigating agencies as they scanned the entire campus but no incriminating documents were found in the premises during the search by the agencies.”

In this case, the Congress leaders claimed the Disaster Management Act 2005, which was exercised by the Assam government to demolish the madrasa was misused and urged the NCM to intervene and probe into the entire matter in order to ensure justice to the 224 students of the now demolished madrasa.

Following an order issued by the Bongaigaon district magistrate on August 30, which stated that the madrasa did not have the necessary documents for multipurpose activities on a single campus with multiple buildings, the madrasa was demolished on August 31.

As the buildings were not constructed in line with PWD regulations, the madrasa was structurally weak and unfit for human habitation, the order added.

In the past month, four madrasas have been demolished in Assam, with the first three being razed to the ground by government authorities.

The Assam government has been taking action against madrasas claiming they are linked to terror activities.

Besides the madrasa in Bongaigaon, the Assam government authorities have also demolished two other educational institutions, one in the Morigaon district on August 4, and one in the Barpeta district on August 29.

(Except for the headline and the pictorial description, this story has not been edited by THE DEN staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)