New Delhi, February 26 The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance Government has its National Budget 2010 has proposed increase of 50 percent in plan allocation for the next fiscal for the welfare of minority communities in India.

Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee in his Budget speech in Lok Sabha on February 26 said: "I also propose to raise the plan allocation for the ministry of minority affairs from Rs.1,740 crore to Rs.2,600 crore for the year 2010-11."

"I am happy to inform the honourable members that we are close to achieving the target of 15 percent priority sector lending to minorities in the current year. This will be maintained for the next three years," he said.

Therefore, it means there is an increase of about Rs 850 crore for the Minority Affairs Ministry which was allotted Rs 1755 crore in the 2009-2010 Budget. More than 90% of the increased amount will go to three mega scholarship schemes and Multi-Sectoral Development Programme.

The Pre-Matric Scholarship Scheme for Minorities, most popular of three, will now have Rs 405 crore against Rs 180 crore in the last Budget. The Post-Matric Scholarship Scheme would have Rs 238 crore against Rs 135 crore. The budget of Merit-cum-Means scheme for professional and technical courses of undergraduate and post-graduate level has also been increased to the total of Rs 121 crore from Rs 90 crore.

Also, the budget of the Maulana Azad National Fellowship scheme for minority students has been doubled. The scheme which has Rs 13.5 crore in the last budget will now have Rs 27 crore.

Besides, the mega structural development program called Multi-Sectoral Development Programme for Minorities in selected minority concentration districts has also been given a big push with an increase of Rs 336 crore to the 2009 budget of Rs 889 crore.

However, there has been made a reduction in the National Budget for 2010 of Rs 141 crore in the subsidy of Haj flights. It is to point out that the last National Budget for 2009 had allocated Rs 941 crore to the Indian Airlines as a subsidy for the flight of Hajis. This year the allocation has been reduced to Rs 800 crore. While reacting on the reduction in the subsidy, the Acting Chairman of Central Haj Committee, Hasan Ahmed, said it was better to end the provision for a subsidy instead of any reduction because there was no relief to any Haji from this subsidy. According to him, this amount was basically of Hajis that was being given to the airlines as a subsidy. Despite this, there was no facility of international standards being given to the Hajis by the Indian Airlines. He urged the government to entrust the responsibility of to and fro travel of Hajis to the Haj Committee of India instead of giving a subsidy to the Indian Airlines.  

With more than 150 million Muslims as per the last census, India has the world's second-largest Muslim population after Indonesia. They comprise only 14 percent of India's 1.1 billion people followed by Christians 2.3 percent, Sikhs 1.87, Buddhists 0.77 and Jains 0.41 percent.