National

16 Ministers walk out of NCERT meet

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI MAY 27. Education Ministers of 16 States walked out of the 38th annual general meeting of the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) here on Sunday to protest the Council's bid to misrepresent their stand vis-a-vis the National Curriculum Framework for School Education (NCFSE) in Parliament and the Supreme Court.

Though confirmation of the minutes of the December 2000 annual general meeting — during which, as per the affidavit submitted by the NCERT and the Human Resource Development Ministry in the Supreme Court in a public interest litigation against the curriculum, approval of the members had been obtained for the then proposed NCFSE — was listed first on the agenda, it came up for discussion a good two hours after the meeting began.

After a round of heated discussion with Council officials led by the HRD Minister and NCERT president, Murli Manohar Joshi, sticking to their guns, the 16 Education Ministers walked out of the meeting denouncing the Ministry and NCERT's efforts to "mislead the nation, Parliament and Supreme Court" by "asserting that the NCFSE was discussed and approved by the 37th annual general meeting held on December 13, 2000''.

The 16 Education Ministers also demanded that the HRD Minister and the NCERT Director withdraw all such statements made in Parliament and the Supreme Court. Further, affirming that the appropriate forum for evolving and approving a national curriculum framework for the country was the Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE), they demanded that it be constituted and convened at the earliest, and the implementation of the NCFSE kept in abeyance till then.

The Ministers who walked out represented Rajasthan, Kerala, Nagaland, Assam, Karnataka, Chattisgarh, Uttaranchal, West Bengal, Punjab, Bihar, Tripura, Pondicherry, Madhya Pradesh, Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh and Mizoram.

Earlier in the day, most of them had met and discussed their strategy for the meeting. While the West Bengal Education Minister, Kanti Biswas, led the offensive against the NCERT and the Ministry, the directive from the Congress central leadership to its State Education Ministers to take a clear stand against the efforts of the powers that be to "fabricate'' a consensus on the NCFSE added strength to the effort.

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