The government on Thursday told the Lok Sabha that there is no proposal at present to grant constitutional status to the National Commission for Minorities.
In a written response to a question in the lower house by Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, Minority Affairs Minister Smriti Irani said the National Commission for Minorities (NCM) was established as a statutory body with the enactment of the National Commission for Minorities Act, 1992 by Parliament.
This Act came into force with effect from May 17, 1992, she said.
"Under section 2 (c) of the said Act, the central government has notified five religious communities namely, Buddhists, Christians, Muslims, Sikhs, and Zoroastrians (Parsis) as minority communities," she said.
Subsequently, the central government further notified the Jain community as a minority community vides notification on January 27, 2014, the minister said.
"Further, there is no proposal, at present, to grant constitutional status to the National Commission for Minorities," she said.
In response to another question as to whether the number of beneficiaries has indeed decreased under the Pre-Matric and Post-Matric scholarship schemes in 2020-21 in comparison to 2019-20, Irani said there is state-wise/community-wise quota for fresh scholarships under pre-matric and post-matric scholarship schemes.
However, in 2019-20 all the eligible beneficiaries from certain states/UTs were awarded a scholarship under the two schemes and hence the number of scholarships disbursed in 2019-20 was higher than in 2020-21, she said.
On whether the government has considered revising the income criteria under the scheme since the fixed income limit deprives many students of availing benefits of such schemes, the minister said the process of scheme revision is a continuous process and various aspects, including revision of the income criteria under the scholarship schemes, are looked into by the ministry during such processes.
