Date:02/07/2004 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2004/07/02/stories/2004070210741300.htm

National

Central Advisory Board on Education to be reconstituted

By Anita Joshua

NEW DELHI, JULY 1. The Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry has decided to reconstitute the Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE). Its first meeting is likely to be held after the budget session of Parliament.

The former HRD Minister, Murli Manohar Joshi, had attempted to reconstitute the CABE in 1999, but the subsequent controversy over "saffronisation" of textbooks and the apprehension that the National Curriculum Framework for School Education would be rejected by the Opposition-ruled States — which are represented on the Board — made him decide against it despite demands from various quarters and a Supreme Court suggestion that it be constituted again.

Of the view that the CABE was the only advisory body that cut across all sectors of education and provided an avenue to the States to deliberate on what is essentially a State subject, the new dispensation at the HRD Ministry decided to reconstitute it after a decade. The extended term of the last CABE expired in March 1994.

The Ministry has also decided to continue with the original contours of the CABE and not the truncated body that was cleared by Dr. Joshi in 1999 but which was never operationalised.

He had given the nod for a 60-member Board in line with a proposal mooted in January 1997 by the then Prime Minister, H.D. Deve Gowda. When a proposal for reconstitution was sent to him, Mr. Gowda had returned it with the remark that it was too unwieldy and that it be made more compact. But the present dispensation favours the original structure as it "reflects the federal character of Indian polity."

The new CABE will have 106 members: five Union Ministers, four Lok Sabha members and two Rajya Sabha members, Education Ministers from all States and Union Territories, Member (Education) of the Planning Commission, 14 chairpersons/representatives of various organisations under the Ministry, 32 nominated members and 13 permanent invitees (secretaries of various Central Ministries/Departments) besides the HRD Minister, the Minister of State and the Education Secretary.

The Ministry has also decided to wind up the committee set by Dr. Joshi in February 2003 to evolve an alternative to the CABE for consultation with States.

Under pressure to provide a channel for coordinating with States on educational issues but having decided against reconstituting the Board, the setting up of the committee was seen as a bid by Dr. Joshi to resurrect the rationale of the Board in a new incarnation.