Congress workers on Saturday held protests at various places in Uttar Pradesh against the BJP government for cutting the Aligarh Muslim University’s budget to nine core from 62 cores in 2018. They also sent memorandums to Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan urging him to increase the varsity’s budget to 100 crores.
Congress leader Shahnawaz Alam slammed Prime Minister Narendra over the same. In a press release, he said, “the PM who has a fake degree does not want to let others study.”
“As the Sangh [RSS] cannot lock AMU nor can it demolish it like Babri Masjid, the government is reducing the budget to economically weaken it,” he added in a press release.
Congress claimed that the budget for AMU was reduced to 22 crores from 62 crores in 2017-18. It was further reduced to 16 crores in 2019-20. It was again reduced to 14 crores in 2020-2021. In 2021-22, it was reduced to 10 crores and in 2022-23, it was reduced to nine corers.
Shahnawaz Alam called the budget reduction “unfortunate”. He said that the AMU that has secured the 10th position in NIRF ranking should have been encouraged by the government to achieve “higher educational goals”.
He wanted that Congress will launch a nation-wide agitation if the government fails to increase the budget for AMU.