Two decades after taking an initiative for promotion of girls’ education in his native town, a Mumbai-based entrepreneur is testing his fortunes in the Assembly election in the Sikar constituency in the Shekhawati region of Rajasthan .

The Excellence Knowledge City for Girls, established by Wahid Chowhan, has made the dusty district of Sikar one of the educationally advanced ones in the State.

Mr. Chowhan, 70, has been fielded here by the Rashtriya Loktantrik Party, which was floated by Hanuman Beniwal, Independent MLA, recently. Mr. Beniwal wants to create a third front in the State, where the BJP and the Congress have been elected alternately since 1993.

Mr. Chowhan’s college offers free tuition, books and uniforms to girls, and the curriculum is a mix of madrasa teaching and mainstream subjects.

It is probably the first institution which has introduced Sanskrit along with Urdu and Arabic as the languages taught.

While seeking votes, Mr. Chowhan speaks of the difficulties he had faced when he started the college. The local people had suspected that he wanted to corrupt the minds of innocent Muslims or he intended to set up a five-star hotel.

“From the earlier imbalance of girls being deprived of education, we have now reached the opposite extreme. Girls are now highly educated compared with boys,” he says.

The initiative has given an impetus to girls’ education in Sikar. “No girl, especially in the minority communities, stays at home. With higher education, they are all moving up the social ladder,” social activist Ashfaq Kayamkhani says.

Open to both Muslim and Hindu girls, the college offers education in mainstream subjects from science and humanities to business administration. Muslim girls can opt for the madrasa curriculum.

Mr. Chowhan is pitted against Ratan Jaldhari, MLA and BJP candidate, and Rajendra Pareek of the Congress, who was defeated in 2013.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Elections> Rajasthan / by Mohammed Iqbal / Sikar – November 24th, 2018