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Mumbai: Member of Legislative Assembly from the city, Amin Patel, has asked the Minister of Minority Affairs, Kiren Rijuju, to restart the Coaching and Guidance Centre at Haj House near Crawford Market.
The coaching centre provided coaching and training facilities, along with residential facilities, for students from minority communities aspiring to join the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) and allied services. It was started in 2009 and has helped 25 of its students to clear the Union Public Service Commission exams that selects officers for the IAS.
However, it has not issued notifications for a new batch after 2023. Patel said that the centre had motivated young people from the minority community to become active in national life. "The restarting of the institute will help minority students to fulfill their dream of becoming a civil servant and take part in nation building, " Patel said. Patel asked Rijuju to issue a fresh notification for a new batch of students.
The institute was started by the Haj Committee of India, a body under the minority affairs ministry to regulate and facilitate the annual Haj pilgrimage, with an initial intake of 50 students. The centre had its first success in the next year itself when one of the students in the first batch cleared the UPSC exams. The centre was revamped in 2017 and its student intake increased to 200 annually. Apart from those who have made it in the UPSC, 150 students have cleared other government exams. Students are selected through an all-India entrance exam.
However, in 2021-22, the student intake was reduced to 100 despite a capacity for 200, said Patel. Mentors, who guided the students, were replaced by tutors from coaching classes. Earlier, senior students who did not make it in the first attempts, were allowed to stay on at the centre to reattempt the test. This was discontinued. Since 2023, there are no students staying at the centre.
Patel said that the centre did not take any money from the government, instead using the corpus from the Haj pilgrimage to fund its activities. Patel said that the rooms in the multi-storey Haj House are used during the one and half month of the pilgrimage and remain vacant for the rest of the year. He added that women students used the facility because parents felt that the centre provided a safe and conducive environment.
