New Delhi, March 10: As per Annual Report, Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS), 2023-24, the literacy rate among Muslims is 79.5 per cent for persons aged 7 years and above, while literacy rate for all religions for the same age group is 80.9 per cent, the Parliament was informed on Monday.
Minister of Minority Affairs Kiren Rijiju said in a reply in Rajya Sabha that the government has adopted a multipronged strategy for development of minority communities with special focus on educational empowerment, infrastructure development, economic empowerment, fulfilling special needs, and strengthening of minority institutions.
He said the Ministry is mandated for formulation of policies, schemes and programmes for welfare and socio-economic development of six notified minority communities namely, Buddhists, Christians, Jains, Muslims, Parsis and Sikhs.
Earlier, the Minister shared data related to improvement in literacy rate of Muslims over the past three decades – with a marked bridging of gap between Muslims and other religions. As per Census 2001, the literacy rate among Muslims aged 7 years and above was 59.1 per cent while all-India literacy rate for the same age-group was 64.8 per cent. As per Census 2011, the literacy rate among Muslims aged 7 years and above was 68.5 per cent as compared to all-India literacy rate of 73 per cent. Thus, the literacy rate among Muslims has increased by 9.4 percentage points in Census 2011 as compared to Census 2001, the Minister said.
Sharing details of various educational empowerment schemes for minority communities in Odisha, the Minister said as per provisional data for academic year 2022-23 Pre-Matric scholarships were provided to 700 students while the number of beneficiaries in 2021-22 was 25,620. The number of Post-Matric scholarships provided in Odisha in 2022-23 was 779. As many 4,030 Post-Matric scholarships were awarded in 2021-22.
The Minister said the government has undertaken several steps to encourage education among the children of minority communities across the country for socio-economic and educational empowerment of the notified minority communities and as a result to reduce the dropout rate various scholarship schemes have been implemented.
In all these schemes, 30 per cent scholarships have been earmarked for girl students of minority community. The schemes for minority community students include Pre-Matric Scholarship Scheme that was approved in January 2008 for Class 9 and was applicable up to 2021-22.
A Post-Matric Scholarship Scheme was launched in November 2007 for Class 9 to Ph.D. and Merit-cum-Means based Scholarship Scheme was launched in the year 2007 for Technical and Professional Courses at undergraduate/post graduate level.
IANS