Gujarat Muslims “excluded” from gov’t job scheme

[sonz]

The chief secretary of the western Indian state of Gujarat, which witnessed the deadly 2002 Hindu-Muslim riots, is under pressure to take corrective action to include Muslims in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) scheme, The Indian Express reported.

“I am concerned about this lapse and am awaiting the state government’s response,” said the Minister for Rural Development Raghuvansh Prasad Singh.

Singh also said that the initial response from the state government has been encouraging, with some local politicians promising to take corrective measures.

The Union Ministry for Minority Affairs also expressed its concern over the issue in a formal letter to the rural development ministry, calling for a probe into the complaints of Muslims being discriminated against in the UPA government’s job scheme.

“The Ministry of Minority Affairs has written to the Rural Development Ministry for investigation of the reports of Muslims being excluded from the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme in Gujarat,” said secretary M N Prasad.

The National Commission for Minorities also expressed concerns that Muslims “have been kept out of the ‘job’ scheme through a strategy mixing disinformation with no information and prejudice.”

It also demanded the Gujarat government to submit a report on whether Muslims from the Panchmahals, Banaskantha and Sabarkantha districts have been excluded from the scheme.

AlJazeera