Lucknow, Aug. 24: The Mulayam Singh Yadav government today decided to form a Madrasa Board to put madarsa education on a par with mainstream education, days after its attempt to set up an Urdu university was foiled.

Chief secretary V.K. Mittal said the cabinet decided today to pass an ordinance to set up the board.

“So long, the students who used to come from madarsas have been facing difficulty in enrolling themselves for college education. The board will now have powers to conduct exam and award degrees to students from these schools,” he said.

The Congress, which supports the Samajwadi Party government from outside and had scuttled the university move, and the BJP called the decision another “mindless form of Muslim appeasement”.

Early this month, the chief minister had tried to table a bill for a university at Rampur that was to have his close associate and state minister Mohammad Azam Khan as pro-chancellor for life.

But the bill was stalled following objections from the governor.