Syed Ali Ahmed | India Tomorrow
NEW DELHI, AUGUST 26 –Former Congress councillor from Janata Colony in East Delhi and now an AAP leader, Zakir Khan, has been nominated chairman of the Delhi Minorities Commission after the term of Dr. Zafarul Islam Khan expired in July.
Zakir Khan joined his assignment today.
Kawaljit Singh and Nancy Barlow have been appointed as members in the new commission.
The chairman and two members of the Commission have a three-year term as per the Delhi Minorities Commission Rules 2000.
Zakir, who was a Congress councilor in East Delhi Municipal Corporation from 2012 to 2017, has taken pledge to work for the benefit of the minorities as chairman of the Delhi Minorities Commission. Before joining AAP he was active in the Congress Party and had contested Delhi Assembly elections on Congress ticket from Babarpur. But he lost the elections to Gopal Rai of AAP. While BJP candidate stood second, Khan was on third position by securing less than 10,000 votes.
The former Councillor, who is a graduate from the Delhi University, said minorities are not aware of government schemes of loan for small scale industry, printing boutiques and other small scale businesses. Apart from this, education schemes including scholarships for school students, higher education and technical education are there. Central government has education committee for minorities. He assured to make all these schemes popular by conducting meetings with community representatives.
He said that Muslims faced problems in getting Aadhar card, PAN card, election identity cards etc. They faced problems many times only due to due mistakes in their spelling of their names. He assured getting all these things done. Besides, there is problem of boundary walls in many graveyards. He assured to raise this issue with Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal.
He said if needed he would get published pamphlets to distribute them in mosques, madrassas, gurdwaras, churches and religious places of other minorities to make people aware of the government schemes. He also assured to meet area MLAs to solve problems being faced by the minorities.
Zakir, who is also known as a good social worker, said that he would further strengthen different committees under DMC for expediting work of different minority communities.
He said he had already done social work in minority areas. He got constructed drains, roads, parks and water supply work in many areas as a councillor.
