Senior ministry official said only four states — West Bengal, UP, Bihar and Kerala — so far have regulated madrasas. (Picture for representational purpose only) Senior ministry official said only four states — West Bengal, UP, Bihar and Kerala — so far have regulated madrasas. (Picture for representational purpose only)

Intelligence agencies in a report to the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) have said that majority of madrasas in the country were not involved in “jihadi indoctrination”, and a survey was being carried out to identify the institutions where people from other countries were employed as teachers.

Officials said they were in the process of verifying the identity and the nationality of teaching staff in madarsas in the border areas as they could belong to neighbouring Bangladesh and Pakistan, and might be working here on fake identity papers.

In a year-long study, conducted secretly by a combination of central agencies, it was found that though there was no regulation on the number of madrasas and the content they taught, nothing objectionable was found in their teaching.

A senior ministry official said only four states — West Bengal, UP, Bihar and Kerala — so far have regulated madrasas. “The most important thing is that madrasas where teachers were locals, nothing objectionable was found. However, probe into the Burdwan blast has revealed that a person from Bangladesh was running a madrasa and was giving training in jihadi ideology to the girl students. So far, we have not found any other instance where foreigners were teaching in Indian madrasas, but there could be a case of fake identity,” said an official.

According to the data available with the government, there are around 1,700 madrasas along the Bangladesh border, all located within 20 kilometres of the International border (IB) in West Bengal, Assam, Tripura and Meghalaya.

One of the other reasons attributed to the mushrooming of these religious institutions as per the report was “unemployment”. The report said that since most education in the madrasas is religious and not up to date with the curriculum being taught in other schools, the children studying there did not have any employment opportunities.

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