Calcutta High Court has declared the monthly allowances given to Imams in West Bengal as unconstitutional. On April 3, 2012, WB Chief minister Mamata Banerjee had announced a monthly stipend of Rs 2500 to 30,000 Imams in the state. It was widely linked to garnering their support during the Panchayat Elections.
The decision was challenged in the Calcutta High Court by BJP. In the verdict, Justices Pranab Kumar Chattopadhyay and Murari Prasad Srivastava declared it unconstitutional.
“We always believed that the move to pay monthly honorariums only to Imams was discriminatory and unconstitutional and the court today (Monday) upheld our contention,” state BJP president Rahul Sinha said.
“The government has a duty to look after the people of the weaker section and no government unless it has a communal bias can provide allowances to any religious leaders of any community.†“More so, Waqf Board is authorised to provide public money to the weaker sections, but not to distribute it’s funds to the Imams. The state government also cannot not provide public money to the Waqf Board for providing allowances to the Imams,†he added.
Mr Sinha said this was nothing but a bribery to secure the Muslim votes in the Panchayat election.
The Court’s Verdict has been welcomed by opposition parties including CPM and Congress.
The West Bengal Government’s decision was met by protests among Muslims also. They argued that Poor Muslim people need the allowances, not Imams. They also alleged that most of Imams get good help from the ‘Masjid fund’ and the ‘Muslim society’ and most of them are attached with ’Arabic Education System’, ‘Koran Telawat in Islamic Jalsa’ and ‘Qudrati Tabiz-Dowa-Hekkimi treatment’ from which they get suficient money. But the poor Muslims donot get any monthly financial help who really need it owing to acute poverty.