Autonomous council, no doubt about the program: Minister of Rajasthan
A day after the Union Ministry of Education demanded a response from the Rajasthan government on the line of six Congress-related questions during the recent Class X State Council review, the Minister of Education of the state said Tuesday that the Center’s decision was the first such example that it is aware of. and denied any government interference.
“I have never seen such a case before, in which the Center writes to a state government during a Council review,” Rajasthan’s Education Minister BD Kalla said on Tuesday. ‘Indian Express.
“We will ask RBSE for an explanation [Rajasthan Board of Secondary Education], which is an autonomous body. Thereafter, we will send our response to the Center,” said Pawan Kumar Goyal, Additional Chief Secretary of the School Education Department.
The Center’s letter was addressed to Goyal.
Sources from the Union Department of Education said such interventions on state board question papers are not done on a routine basis. “But after the issue was highlighted in the media, the ministry saw fit to seek contributions from the state,” a ministry source said. “Six questions on one part in a question paper seemed inappropriate.”
With education being a competing list topic, such contributions can be sought, and the Center has not asked for any explanation as such, the source added.
The source said that the Ministry of Union Ministry had in the past written to the government of Rajasthan over alleged irregularities in teacher recruitment tests in the state after the matter was raised in Parliament and reported in the media. “But there was no response from the state,” the source said.
In Jaipur, Kalla, who also served as education minister in previous Congress governments, said the questions being asked were in line with the curriculum followed by the state government.
“The RBSE is an autonomous body and there is no interference from the state government,” Kalla said. “The questions that were asked (in the article) came from prescribed chapters of the political science curriculum – there was nothing in the curriculum.”
Under previous BJP governments, he said, questions had been asked about Atal Bihari Vajpayee or Deen Dayal Upadhyay. “The questionnaires are written in such secrecy that even the chairman of the board of directors is not aware (of the questions),” the minister said.
As the BJP opposition clashed with Ashok Gehlot’s Congress government over the incident, the RBSE said the question paper was compiled by an independent panel of experts on the matter.
