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 the 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 multi-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 to do 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.”