The Hindu : New Delhi News : BJP Ministers attend education board meet

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Aug 13, 2004

New Delhi

New Delhi

BJP Ministers attend education board meet

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, AUG. 12. After threatening to boycott the concluding day's proceedings of the first meeting of the reconstituted Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE), the Education Ministers of five Bharatiya Janata Party ruled States attended the deliberations yesterday and had by evening bagged chairmanship of one of the seven CABE committees constituted to address certain issues raised over the past two days.

However, the Education Ministers of Rajasthan, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand maintained that there would be no going back on their decision to reject the changes made by the new order at the Human Resource Development Ministry in the history textbooks published by the National Council of Educational Research and Training. "The arbitrary changing of history and social science textbooks ordered by the HRD Minister, Arjun Singh, in contravention to the Supreme Court's judgment will not apply in our States,'' the Rajasthan Education Minister, Ghanshyam Tiwari, said at press conference after the CABE meeting.

His differences with the Ministry on the constitution of CABE and the inclusion of the National Common Minimum Programme on its agenda notwithstanding, Mr. Tiwari — who led the BJP charge against Mr. Singh at the inaugural session of the CABE meeting on Tuesday — said he had decided to accept the HRD Minister's "request'' that he chair the Committee on Universalisation of Secondary Education.

The decision to accept the offer was taken after he consulted the BJP president, Venkaiah Naidu, and got the green signal from the party.

The other six committees set up under CABE are the Committee on Free and Compulsory Education Bill under the Union Minister of State for Science and Technology, Kapil Sibal, the Committee on Girls Education and Common School System under the Assam Chief Minister, Tarun Gogoi, the Committee on Autonomy of Higher Education Institutions under the West Bengal Education Minister, Kanti Biswas, the Committee on Integration of Culture Education in School Curriculum under the Gyanpeeth awardee, U.R. Ananthamurthy, the Committee on Regulatory Mechanism for textbooks and parallel textbooks taught in schools outside the Government system under Zoya Hassan of Jawaharlal Nehru University and political scientist, Gopal Guru, and the Committee on Financing of Higher and Technical Education under the Planning Commission member, Bhalchandra Mungekar.

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