Meeting of Intellectuals for Minority Schemes

The Ministry of Minority Affairs, with the intention to hold consultations with all the five Minority communities notified under Section 2 (c) of the National Commission for Minorities Act, 1992, held the first consultation meeting with intellectuals from the Muslim community for the formulation of the 12th Five Year Plan on 7.7.2011. Ninety Minority Concentration Districts (MCDs) have also been identified, inter alia, on the basis of percentage of population of all the five Minority communities. The basis of identification was the following:

(1) First the following population criteria were applied to short list districts-

(i) Districts with a substantial minority population of at least 25% of the total population were identified in 29 States/UTs.

(ii) Districts having a large absolute minority population exceeding 5 lakhs and the percentage of minority population exceeding 20% but less than 25% were identified in 29 States/UTs.

(iii) Districts in the six States/UTs, where a minority community is in majority, districts having 15% of minority population, other than that of the minority community in majority in that State/UT.

(2) The short listed districts were then subjected to the following backwardness parameters –

(i) Religion-specific socio-economic indicators at the district level in literacy rate; female literacy rate; work participation rate; and female work participation rate; and

(ii) Basic amenities indicators at the district level in percentage of households with pucca walls; percentage of households with safe drinking water; percentage of households with electricity; and percentage of households with water closet latrines.

(3) Districts falling below the national average in both or in either one of the above sets of backwardness parameters were identified as MCDs. There are 90 such districts, of which Muslims are predominant in 66 MCDs, Christians in 13 MCDs, Buddhists in 10 MCDs and Sikhs in one MCD.

--------------------

KKP/sl