Key Points
The minority affairs ministry and the Central Waqf Council want to pull the plug on it, and a judicial reprieve seems unlikely..
Sitting in his cramped office, a 50-year-old senior official, his spectacles perched on his nose, discusses thelatestnews in a hushed tone: the Delhi High Court hasreserved its verdicton the closure of MAEF.Whether the court agrees with the central governments assessment of the institution as obsolete remains to be seen..
On 7 February, the Ministry of Minority Affairs,acting on a proposal by theCentral Waqf Council (CWC), ordered the closure of the Maulana Azad Education Foundation, established in 1989 to promote education among minoritiesand disadvantagedsections throughscholarships and grants.Theorderdid not outline any reasons, butallegationsof redundancy and irregularities in schemes surfaced later...
The government has also halted granting new projects under the Grant-in-Aid Scheme and has also stopped those projects that were previously approved, the official said.He said he was most concernedabout schools or NGOs that started work on their educational institutions with the grantand are now worried about theirunfinished work due to the sudden halt of projects...
Ayyubiconsiders the ministrys decision to be a terrible exercise of power with no valid justification,and argues that the funding restrictions: placed on the foundation are unjust.. Further, since MAEF is registeredunder the Societies Registration Act 1860,it has the right to make its own decisions, and shutting it down requires a specific number of members present and a fair, objective process, Ayyubi said..
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