Gorakhpur (Uttar Pradesh), Feb 8,2023: The Uttar Pradesh government has started an exercise to track sources of the money reaching around 1,500 unrecognised madrasas running along the Indo-Nepal border and collect information regarding the number of students studying there.

In a letter to district minority welfare officers of various districts, the registrar, Uttar Pradesh Madrasa Education Board, Jagmohan Singh has sought details about the strength of students along with income and expenses records of madrasas functioning at the borders.

Madrasas have to be categorised in three categories.

In the first category, the madrasas with strength of 100 to 200 students, while in the second category madrasas having enrolment of over 200 to 500 students and in the last category, madrasa with over 500 students will be listed.

Gorakhpur minority welfare officer Ashutosh Pandey said a letter to this effect had been received and the objective of the exercise was to update the record of Madrasa Board website.

These madrasas are located in Balrampur, Shravasti, Maharajganj, Siddharth Nagar, Bahraich and Lakhimpur Kheri districts.

During the state government’s 46-day madrasa survey conducted in September-October last year seeking information on 12 aspects, including their source of funding, most of these madrasas had claimed that they got ‘zakat’ from cities like Kolkata, Chennai, Mumbai, Delhi and Hyderabad but there was no record of the money that reached them.