Education Ministers stage walkouts
Objectionable annexures dropped
Tribune News Service and agencies

NEW DELHI, Oct 22 — The three-day conference of Education Ministers, inaugurated by the Prime Minister, Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee, began today on a stormy note with walkouts by ministers of Opposition-ruled states, forcing the Human Resource Development Minister, Dr Murli Manohar Joshi, to drop the controversial annexures of the agenda papers and the presentation paper by Mr PD Chitlangia considered close to the RSS. Ministers of MP, Bihar and Orissa boycotted the deliberations.

The government faced an uphill task as it faced a major embarrassment when the Punjab Education Minister, Mr Tota Singh of the Akali Dal, one of the BJP allies, joined the boycott of "Sarswati vandana" by Education Ministers from states ruled by the Congress, Left parties and the Rashtriya Janata Dal at the inaugural ceremony.

Even the Prime Minister’s assurance that there was no place for religious bigotry or intolerance in the field of education failed to placate the angry ministers.

Unruly scenes continued throughout the day. The ministers from West Bengal, Tripura, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Orissa, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala succeeded in forcing Dr Joshi to exclude the paper by Mr Chitlangia and drop the controversial annexures attached to the agenda papers.

The trouble started as soon as the compere of the conference started reading out the programme for the inaugural ceremony. Andhra Pradesh Education Minister K. Pratibha Bharathi drew the attention of the Prime Minister to the inclusion of "Saraswati vandana" in the programme against the wishes of many ministers.

She said "in a multi-religious society like ours, invocation of any song that has association with any particular religion is not correct".

The Andhra minister was joined by ministers from West Bengal, Kerala, Tripura, Assam, Bihar, Orissa, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and MP besides Punjab.

The Human Resource Development Minister told the agitated ministers that the conference would begin with the Prime Minister lighting the lamp followed by the recitation of the National Anthem. The ministers then returned to their seats.

However, the National Anthem was followed by the recitation of "Saraswati vandana", which led to the walkout.

"Take back the RSS agenda. Protect the Constitution", the ministers from Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Kerala, West Bengal, Tripura and Orissa shouted, even as they were joined by their colleague from Punjab. The Andhra minister, however, did not join the walkout.

The Punjab Education Minister said his party was opposed to the recitation of a religious song of any particular religion.

Just after the completion of "Saraswati vandana", the Andhra minister lodged a protest with the Prime Minister saying ‘’unfortunately, a precedent has been set today. This has some serious implications. This could have been avoided. Otherwise, similar songs from other religions could have been included".

The ministers from the Opposition-ruled states returned to Vigyan Bhawan just when the Human Resource Development Minister started reading out his speech.

There was a clash between Bihar Education Minister Jai Prakash Narain Yadav and Delhi Finance Minister Jagdish Mukhi when the former tried to interrupt the Human Resource Development Minister’s speech. "Why are you interrupting the minister... You can go out but we will not allow this interruption", an angry Mr Mukhi shouted at the Bihar minister.

The Prime Minister, preferred to remain silent. In his speech, Mr Vajpayee called for "perfect coordination" between the Centre and the states based on a common approach to eradicate illiteracy.

Pointing out that education was a state subject, the Prime Minister proposed that the state transfer the administration of primary schools to panchayats, mandal panchayats and zila parishads.

He said there was need for a strong political will to improve the quality of education in primary schools. Lamenting that bureaucrats had an upper hand in the running of schools, he wanted that school staff should be made to feel that they had a say in running their institutions.