Sachar Committee

A committee headed by Justice Rajindar Sachar was formed in 2005 to look into the social, economic and educational status of the Muslim Community of the country. It submitted its report in 2006 with the following observations and recommendations:

Recommendations: Setting up an Equal Opportunity Commission to look into grievances of deprived groups like minorities.

• Providing legal mechanism for addressing complaints of discrimination against minorities in matters of employment, housing, schooling and obtaining bank loans.
• Establishing a delimitation procedure that does not reserve constituencies with high minority population for SCs.
• Creating a National Data Bank (NDB) where all relevant data for various socio-religious categories are maintained.
• Setting up an autonomous assessment and monitoring authority to evaluate the extent of development benefits.
• Encouraging the University Grants Commission to evolve a system where part of allocation to colleges and universities is linked to diversity in student population.
• Facilitating admissions to the most backward amongst all socio-religious categories in regular universities and autonomous colleges and evolving alternate admission criteria.
• Providing financial and other support to initiatives built around occupations where Muslims are concentrated and that have growth potential.
• Increase employment share of Muslims, particularly where there is great deal of public dealing. Working out mechanisms to link Madarsas with higher secondary school board.
• Improving teacher training component to introduce importance of diversity and plurality and sensitizing teachers towards needs and aspirations of Muslims and other marginalized communities.
• Set up a National Waqf Development Corporation with a revolving corpus fund of Rs 500 crore. Create new cadre to deal with specific Waqf affairs.

Out of 76 recommendations, government accepted 72 recommendations, 3 were withheld for time being and one was rejected.