Eight members of the Tamil Nadu State Education Policy (SEP) high-level committee have refuted the recent allegations made by former member Jawahar Nesan. A joint statement issued by them on Monday, May 15, denied Jawahar’s allegations that the committee and its chairman D Murugesan functioned undemocratically and that it was trying to bring in elements from the National Education Policy 2020 (NEP).
Jawahar Nesan, a former Vice-Chancellor of Saveetha University and former member of the SEP committee, levelled serious allegations against the committee's chairperson and slammed what he called bureaucratic disruptions in the making of its policies on May 10, while resigning from the committee.
He had alleged that the committee was moving towards implementing NEP 2020 in the state. Jawahar also alleged that he had been verbally abused by T Udayachandran, former secretary to Chief Minister MK Stalin.
The chairman of the committee, D Murugesan, a retired Delhi High Court judge, has refuted the allegations and called them baseless on May 11. The statement by the eight members supported Murugesan’s contentions in their entirety.
Refuting the allegations against the chairman, the members said that he functioned in a democratic and transparent manner. “Every meeting with stakeholders has been attended at least by one of the committee members and the deliberations are shared with everyone else,” they noted.
On the issue of “bureaucratic disruptions,” they said that the discussions with the bureaucracy had always been about understanding the nitty gritty of the government programmes in terms of finances and implementation functionaries.”
The members insisted that there was no discussion whatsoever on implementing the NEP. “The committee is well aware that in a democratic society, discussing all the views in hand is the most cultured and liberal approach to public policy-making in the interest of children's future and all the stakeholders' welfare,” the statement reads further. They also promised to create a policy that would reflect the concerns of the state and aim at achieving equity in education for all children in the state.
Educationists Aruna Rathnam and Thulasithasan, State Planning Commission members R Srinivasan and Sultan Ahmed Ismail, Jaishree Damodaran of Agaram Foundation, musician TM Krishna, and writers S Ramakrishnan and S Madasamy were the signatories.
Three other members, including chess grandmaster Viswanathan Anand, former professor of the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Ramanujam, and R Balu, headmaster of a government school in Nagapattinam district, did not sign the statement.