Arjun's Left turn for Bengal

Published on: Jul 14, 2006, 02:00:00 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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HRD minister Arjun Singh has proved to be an ally in shining armour for the Left government in West Bengal. In its hour of need, the minister has decided to regularise all B.Ed colleges in the state with retrospective effect.

The West Bengal High Court had recently declined recognisation to all Bachelor of Education (B.Ed) degree colleges in the state on the grounds of their non-affiliation to the national statutory body, National Council for Teachers’ Education (NCTE), and therefore deemed them unauthorised. The ruling had made many students studying in these colleges insecure about their future. Many of them had taken to the streets and demanded recognition to these colleges or some solution from the state government.

As the NCTE Act is a law enacted by Parliament and following its regulations is a statutory requirement for running all B.Ed colleges, the state government had no option but to turn to the HRD ministry for a solution. State education minister Kanti Biswas met Singh and urged him to regularise affiliation of these colleges. NCTE officials, who were present at the meeting, were asked to come up with a solution to the problem.

According to sources, NCTE has proposed a special amendment in the NCTE Act allowing affiliation of the institutes in West Bengal with retrospective effect. “There will be no compromise on the standards. Affiliation will be granted only after due inspection by our staff,” an official said, when asked about the amendment.

Sources say this is a bid to drop the clause that states that all B.Ed colleges are required to seek recognisation from the NCTE within six months of the Act coming into force. “It is a one-time exemption and will not be applicable to other states,” the official informed.

The NCTE has sent a draft proposal for amendment in the NCTE Act to the ministry.

Not committing whether an Ordinance will be issued, sources didn't rule out the possibility of introducing the Bill in the monsoon session. If that doesn't happen the government can issue an Ordinance, a source said, pointing that the ball is now in HRD ministry's court.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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