COURT NIXES DOLE FOR IMAMS 4th Sep 2013 Saugar Sengupta | Kolkata - Daily Pioneer In a setback to West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee, Calcutta High Court on Monday struck down a State Government Order providing allowances to imams and muezzins. Hearing a PIL filed by the BJP, a Division Bench of HC of 3 judges said the Government Order clearly violated Articles 14 and 15(1) of the Constitution. Mamata Banerjee had on April 9, 2012 announced monthly allowances of 2,500 for imams and 1,500 for muezzins and got a budgetary allocation of 660 crore passed by the State Assembly. A task force was created by her to identify 30,000 imams out of ~75,000 imams in WB who are receiving the allowances. While State Minister Ghyasuddin Mollah refused to comment, BJP president Rahul Sinha welcomed the verdict: “We always opposed such discriminatory steps as they were against the secular fabric of the Constitution, which says the State cannot discriminate on grounds of religion.”
Posted on: Wed, 11 Sep 2013 18:26:07 +0000
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