Partha slams Centre for not including Bengali as classical language in NEP

Kolkata: State Education minister Partha Chatterjee on Wednesday came down heavily upon the National Education Policy (NEP) with Bengali not finding its place as a classical language in the policy.

"They (the centre) have had the audacity of excluding Bengali as they do not know the contributions of Kazi Nazrul Islam, Rabindranath Tagore, Satyajit Ray, Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay. They have ignored the fact that Education is in the concurrent list and has not consulted us. They have also bypassed the Parliament and has passed NEP in the Central cabinet," said Chatterjee speaking at an education webinar organised by a leading Bengali daily.

He asserted that the move of the Central government is against the federal structure of the Constitution and also questioned the means of procurement of funds for setting up the infrastructure in educational institutions for implementation of the NEP.

The Higher Education department has already constituted a six member committee with noted educationists in the state eliciting opinion about NEP. "They would submit their valuable feedback by August 15 following which we will submit it before Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and then our standpoint about this will be spelt out," said Chatterjee. The committee has members in MP Saugata Roy who is an educationist, Nrisingha Prasad Bhaduri, Pabitra Sarkar, Aveek Majumder, Sabyasachi Basu Ray Chaudhury(Vice-Chancellor of Rabindra Bharati University) and Suranjan Das (V-C of Jadavpur University).

The department has also asked the different mass organisations working in the education sector to share their opinion on NEP. Not only teachers' organisations or mass organisations working in the education sector but any educationist who is not a part of the committee is free to share his/her opinion about NEP.