Amended bill on state minorities’ commission passed in West Bengal Assembly

Kolkata, June 13 The West Bengal Minorities’ Commission (Amendment) bill, 2025, was passed in the Assembly on Friday, allowing the commission to appoint additional persons for key posts there from what was sanctioned earlier.

The most crucial point in this additional appointment was for the post of vice-chairperson of the commission. Once the amended Bill gets the shape of any Act after the clearance from the office of Governor C.V. Ananda Bose, the commission would be able to appoint two vice-chairpersons as against the sanctioned post of one earlier.

However, Nawsad Siddique, the sole All India Secular Front (AISF) representative in the assembly questioned the justification for appointing more than one person for the same post instead of streamlining the functioning of the commission.

BJP legislator and the party’s chief whip in the state assembly Shankar Ghosh mooted a proposal to appoint any “Non-Muslim Public Figure” as one of the vice-chairpersons of the commission. He stressed that the prime motto of the commission should be the spread of education and his proposal was important to identify the lapses in that area.

However, the West Bengal minister of state for finance (independent charge) Chandrima Bhattacharya claimed that the intention of creating additional vice-chairperson posts in the commission is not to make any discrimination.

“Under the existing Act, six religious communities namely Muslims, Christians, Persis, Buddhists, Jains, and Sikhs are covered. The area of functioning of the commission has increased manifold during the last few years. So the new Bill proposes the posts of one chairperson, two vice-chairpersons, and nine members for the commission. This proposal has been mooted under the constitutional provisions,” Bhattacharya said.

She also informed that although there is a provision for remuneration for the commission’s chairperson, there is no such remuneration provision for the vice-chairperson. “The vice-chairperson is only entitled to an allowance of just Rs 1,000 for every meeting he or she will attend,” Bhattacharya said.

--IANS

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