New Delhi: Opposition members in Rajya Sabha on Tuesday accused the government of forcibly thrusting on states the National Education Policy and impinging on their autonomy.
During the discussion on the working of Ministry of Education, Ritabrata Banerjee (TMC) and Kanimozhi NVN Somu (DMK) accused the Centre of withholding funds meant for education programmes in opposition ruled states of West Bengal and Tamil Nadu.
“Without any consultations with the state governments, the NEP (National Education Policy) has been forcibly thrusted upon states,” Banerjee said adding the West Bengal government was forced to stop the four-year graduation course with inter-disciplinary and mulit-disciplinary framework.
Taking a dig at the government over NEP 2020, he said it speaks of promoting critical thinking, scientific temper and constitutional values but topics which are fundamental to science such as periodic table, Darwin’s theory of evolution, Pythagoras theorem, Michael Faraday’s contribution to scientific understanding of electricity and magnetism, have been done away with.
“These have been removed even as thousands of scientists across the country have protested,” he said, adding NCERT is not paying any heed.
Banerjee also pointed out that the UP government has revised the syllabus and in the revision it has excluded Rabindranath Tagore from syllabus.
“An elected state government has every right of doing it. It is their prerogative. They probably think that Rabindranath can be replaced by Ramdev,” he said.
Banerjee also said that in the recently published UGC draft regulations all powers for appointments of Vice-Chancellors of state-run and aided universities have been vested in the hands of Chancellors.
The Governors, who are the Chancellors, are completely ignoring the elected state governments. Literally all powers are centralised in the hands of the Union government, though education is not in the central list, he lamented.
Citing non-release of funds by the Centre to West Bengal meant for educational schemes, he said, “The non-release of fund by Government of India despite being cleared by Ministry of Finance in favour of state of WB is a clear sign of deprivation of our people, and is depriving our people of the Right to Education and this is a clear violation of the Act framed by Parliament.”
Taking part in the discussion, Kanimozhi NVN Somu (DMK) said India has had many illustrious education ministers but after the reign of the BJP government led by Prime Minster Narendra Modi, the education ministry has faced challenges particularly with “irrational policy decisions”.
“Under his leadership there has been a discernible shift that has infringed upon the state’s autonomy, deviating from established federal principles and undermining the intensive framework of development and inclusive governance,” she said.
Somu alleged that from 2014-16, there has been “centralisation and curriculum changes” and from 2016-19, NEET was implemented “undermining state autonomy”.
She said from 2021 to present day, the government has implemented the “NEP language policies, infringing on the state autonomy and cancelling MP quota in KV schools.”
Somu also asserted that Tamil Nadu has never accepted the NEP 2020 policy and it only promised to come back on this issue after scrutinizing it and in August 2024, the state government had informed that the policy is almost similar to the previous Navodaya school project, which was already not implemented in Tamil Nadu and it was not keen to implement it.
Also highlighting the withholding of funds by the Centre, she said,”The delayed release of funds for Tamil Nadu education system is just not an administrative issue. It is a matter of constitutional and federal importance.”
Considering the Right to Education, she said the withholding of funds allocated to the state for educational development “is a direct infringement on the state’s autonomy, sovereignty and the linguistic rights of Tamil Nadu.”
Participating in the discussion, Sanjay Singh (AAP) raised concern over the high rate of school dropout in India and said the country cannot aspire to be a ‘Viksit Bharat’ unless education is universal.
He also criticised the government for cutting funds allocated for various schemes related to the education sector.
Golla Baburao (YSRCP) raised concern over excessive privatisation of primary and secondary education stating poor people are unable to afford education for their children in such institutions due to high costs.
Commenting on the issue of alleged Hindi imposition, Manoj Kumar Jha of RJD stressed on the need to treat each language in the country equally and likening India to a building built from ‘bricks of same size’, he said if one is treated bigger than the other then the entire building will collapse.
He said children have been made “guinea-pigs”, saying educational institutions have turned into a “war zone” for differing ideologies. He suggested that Knowledge Parks be established on the lines of SEZs.
Jha claimed that it was a “strange discrepancy” that while comments on Mughal ruler Aurangzeb are made outside Parliament, the “glorification” of “Mahatma Gandhi’s killers” is done inside the House.
Javed Ali Khan of SP said there have been demands that 6 per cent of GDP be spent on education from around 2.7 per cent at present, and flagged the vacant posts in educational institutions.
