L. Jawahar Nesan, who recently resigned as member of the high-level committee formed to draft the State Education Policy, has refuted the observations made against him by committee chairman Justice D. Murugesan (retired).
In a statement, denying Mr. Nesan’s allegations about the functioning of the committee, Justice Murugesan had blamed the former member for delaying his work. He said Mr. Nesan was not a “convener” of the high-level committee, as he had claimed, and he was only the “convener” of the sub-committees formed under him.
In a statement issued on Saturday, Mr. Nesan said the high-level committee had decided to form sub-committees for various topics in June 2022 itself. As the chairman did not expedite the process, the high-level committee resolved to form the sub-committees only in December 2022 after persistent efforts by him, Mr. Nesan alleged. He said he was made the convener of the high-level committee for coordinating the deliberations of the sub-committees.
While the initial idea was to have the deliberations with the sub-committees in a coordinated and centralised manner in the high-level committee, the chairman, without any consultation, issued a contradictory circular late December, asking all members to prepare a policy draft, with any outside expert of their choice, on the topics chosen by them, Mr. Nesan alleged.
When Mr. Nesan resisted this, the chairman reportedly asked him to continue with the sub-committees while stating that he or the rest of the members would not participate in the deliberations. Mr. Nesan said the allegation that he had delayed the process was baseless and false.
He also alleged that IAS officials started taking over the process of drafting the policy in the past few months and when he raised this issue with the chairman, he allegedly said he did not want to “embarrass the officials” and allowed their interference to continue. While reiterating his allegation that the committee was headed towards drafting a policy similar to the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, he expressed the hope that the chairman would keep the promise made after his resignation that the policy would not be on the lines of the NEP 2020.
