GORAKHPUR : The Uttar Pradesh government has started an exercise to track sources of the money reaching around 1,500 unrecognised madrassas 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 madrassas functioning at the borders.

Madrassas have to be categorised in three categories.

In the first category, the madrassas with strength of 100 to 200 students, while in the second category madrassas having enrolment of over 200 to 500 students and in the last category, madrassas 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 Madrassa Board website.

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

During the state government’s 46-day madrassa survey conducted in September-October last year seeking information on 12 aspects, including their source of funding, most of these madrassas 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. — IANS