Bengaluru: The Siddaramaiah-led Karnataka government has decided to scrap the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 launched by the Modi government and draft one of its own.
In a statement released to the media Monday, the Congress government in Karnataka has cited exclusive rights over the “state-specific subject”.
“Since it is a state subject, the central government cannot formulate the education policy,” said Siddaramaiah.
“The National Education Policy has been formulated without taking the state governments into confidence. The education policy cannot be imposed by (the) central government,” he added in the statement.
The CM said the NEP was “imposed”, and a “conspiracy”.
“A uniform education system cannot be established in a country like India with multicultural and pluralistic society,” the CM said.
Siddaramaiah’s deputy, D.K. Shivakumar, added that a new committee will be formed within a week to deliberate on the new policy, which he referred to as the “new Karnataka education policy”.
Ever since the Congress ousted the BJP in Karnataka this May by winning 135 out of the 224 assembly seats, the former has asserted that it will “undo the wrongs” of its predecessor. This includes contentious legislations on cattle slaughter and conversion.
The NEP decision came after the vice-chancellors of various universities and other academic experts met the chief minister and other members of the government in Bengaluru Monday.
The BJP and the Congress have locked horns over the subject on multiple occasions, each accusing the other of vindictive politics and not working in the interest of the state.
Under the erstwhile BJP government, Karnataka became the first state to implement the NEP. In 2021-22, the then Union minister for education Dharmendra Pradhan had virtually launched the admission process for higher education under the Unified University and College Management System.
Reached for comment, BJP leader B.C. Nagesh contested the Congress’ assertion that education was state-specific, saying that it was a subject on the Constitution’s concurrent list — subjects on which both the Union and state governments can legislate.
Nagesh, a former primary and secondary education minister of Karnataka, said the NEP was the result of extensive consultations with academic experts across the country over years and should not be reduced to a “political exercise”.
“First of all, they (Congress) do not know the NEP. That is unfortunate. They have not read it,” Nagesh told ThePrint.
According to the seventh schedule of the Indian Constitution, several forms of education (aviation, maritime training etc) come under the Union list, while others (medical, technical, among others) come under the concurrent list.
Professor Ravi Varma Kumar, former advocate general of Karnataka and an expert on constitutional law, said the NEP was “not a legislation, so it is not binding on the state”.
“The national Right to Education (RTE) is a central law… now that is binding on the state. But NEP is not a part of RTE Act and is not binding on the state. The state can have its own policy,” he added.
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‘Setting bad precedent’
The Karnataka government, in its statement, said several other BJP-ruled states were also reluctant to implement the NEP.
“States of Kerala and Tamil Nadu have made it clear to the central government that they will not implement the National Education Policy,” Siddaramaiah said.
In response, Nagesh said “education should not be a political event”. “We can’t say it is in the manifesto and shouldn’t do it (change policy). A national policy does not change with governments,” Nagesh added.
He said that there were several such policies mooted by the BJP as well as the Congress in the past that were accepted by governments led by other parties, adding that the Siddaramaiah administration was setting “a bad precedent for political benefit”.
(Edited by Sunanda Ranjan)
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