Lucknow, Nov 16 (PTI) The Uttar Pradesh Madrasa Education Board on Thursday wrote to Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath urging him to start the process of giving government recognition to more than 8,000 madrasas in the state.

UP Madrasa Education Board chairman Iftikhar Ahmed Javed, in his letter to Adityanath, said that not a single madrasa has been recognised in the state in the last eight years due to the state government not giving its nod.

'To assess the facilities available at the madrasas of the state, the government had conducted a survey last year in which it was found that 8,449 madrasas do not have the recognition of the Madrasa Education Board. On November 15 this year, one year has passed since the report of that survey came out,' he said.

Javed said the situation has now become such that some people have started calling unrecognised madrasas as 'illegal'.

He requested the chief minister that the process of giving recognition to the unrecognised madrasas should be started soon so that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's spirit of 'Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas and Sabka Vishwas' can be strengthened.

Javed in his letter pointed out that the future of about 7.5 lakh children studying in these unrecognised madrasas is in dark.

'About 95 per cent of the children in these madrasas come from backward sections of the Muslim society. The prime minister has talked about the welfare of this Pasmanda community,' he said.

Javed told PTI that a board meeting was held on September 12 this year in which he requested madrasa board's registrar Priyanka Awasthi and director J Reebha to start recognition of the madrasas.

He added that both the officials had talked about seeking guidance from the government but no process has begun yet.

Javed said the education department officials are now talking of stopping the operation of unrecognised madrasas and initiating legal action of imposing fines on them.

In UP, there are about 25,000 madrasas in which about 16,000 are recognised by the board. PTI SLM ABN AS ABN AS KVK KVK