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Cong walkout over dropping of lessons on Nehru, Kamla
THE OPPOSITION Congress on Monday staged a walkout during Question Hour accusing the State Government of dropping lessons on Pt Jawaharlal Nehru and those penned on Kamla Nehru and former president Zakir Husain from school syllabus due to its political bias.
THE OPPOSITION Congress on Monday staged a walkout during Question Hour accusing the State Government of dropping lessons on Pt Jawaharlal Nehru and those penned on Kamla Nehru and former president Zakir Husain from school syllabus due to its political bias.
Raising the issue, Arif Aqueel of the Congress sought to know when the expert committee, formed to recommend changes in the syllabus, recommended dropping of lesson on Jawaharlal Nehru and the short story written by Zakir Husain and was it not possible for the Government to introduce new lessons while retaining the lessons dropped.
Minister for School Education Narottam Mishra said recommendations from the committee were received on January 24 and the syllabus was accordingly changed a month later. He said retaining the dropped lessons was not possible since the Yashpal Committee recommended reducing school bag of children. Changes in the syllabus have been brought about in keeping with the Supreme Court directive that small children should be taught about topics like environment.
As the agitated Congress members and Samajwadi Party MLA Dr Sunilam trooped into the well of the House opposing the move, Ministers Narottam Mishra, Kailash Vijayvergiya and Himmat Kotrhari also started speaking in tandem, plunging the House in din for a while. After normalcy was restored, Sajjan Singh Verma of the Congress said that dropping lesson on Pt Nehru in schools, whose birthday is celebrated as the Children’s Day on the pretext of reducing school bag was strange.
Mishra, however, said there were lessons on Pt Nehru in several of the subsequent classes, therefore dropping lesson on him in Standard I should not be interpreted as a biased action. Similarly, the lesson based on Kamla Nehru’s writing has been replaced by an essay written by Pt Nehru titled ‘Akhiri Vasiyat’, he said.
