Hyderabad, July 23: Although Muslims make up India’s largest minority community, they have complained that state-owned banks in the so-called secular country are discriminating against them, a British news channel reported.
The National Commission of Minorities, India’s minorities watchdog, has received a record number of complaints from Muslims who said they have been prevented from opening bank accounts, the BBC reported. The Muslim community is among the poorest in India. Some bankers said that it was not so much their religious background, but their economic status that makes it hard for Muslims to get banking facilities.
The National Commission said that there has been a 100 percent increase in the number of complaints it has received over the past year from Muslims who said they were being prevented from opening accounts in state-run banks.
It is reported that the worst case took place in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, where some 90,000 Muslim students were unable to open accounts to deposit scholarship cheques given to them by the government.
Official reports frequently put Muslims at the bottom of India’s social and economic ladder even beneath low-caste Hindus. The economic status of Muslims means they were often excluded by private banks, which prefer better-to-do clients.
Already a number of reports have suggested that India’s Muslims are treated poorly when it comes to getting access to education or employment opportunities. This latest finding will add more pressure on New Delhi which is seen as doing very little for the country’s largest minority group. And now they are playing with the careers of 30 lakh students for the sake of narrow political gains.
-Agencies