The chairman of Tamil Nadu’s State Education Policy (SEP) high-level committee D Murugesan refuted the allegations made by SEP convener Jawahar Nesan regarding bureaucratic interferences in the making of the policy. On Thursday, May 11, a day after Jawahar stepped down from the committee, Murugesan said that the allegations raised by the former convenor are baseless. Jawahar, who was formerly the vice-chancellor of Saveetha University, had also alleged that he was verbally abused by senior IAS officer T Udhayachandran, and that the committee chairman Murugesan was functioning in an undemocratic manner.
In a press release, Murugesan, a retired Delhi High Court judge, stated, "The allegation that the committee was functioning in an undemocratic manner is false. Equally, the allegation that the chairman is secretly functioning in an undemocratic manner is also false.” He denied that there was any involvement of government officials in the committee's functioning.
A major allegation raised by Jawahar was that the SEP was being drafted along the lines of the National Education Policy, a Union government policy that had received severe backlash from the state’s Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam government. Jawahar’s statement had alleged that the final policy would be “nothing but the rechristened version” of the NEP, driven by the interests of corporate, market, and “sanathanic forces” and the privatisation and commercialisation of education.
Murugesan denied this, calling the allegations "incorrect and malicious." The committee is presently deliberating the inputs received from its members on various points, and its work on formulating the education policy is still in progress, he added. "Neither the committee nor the chairman authorised Jawahar to act as convener of the high-level committee and he was authorised by the committee to act only as a convener of the sub-committees formed only by him," Murugesan’s note further said.
"The committee members assure the people of Tamil Nadu that the deliberations and its formulation of the SEP continues to be an independent, collaborative, and comprehensive exercise involving all stakeholders and keeping in mind the terms of reference, more particularly the socio-economic conditions, historical legacy, and the future needs to enhance the education framework and upliftment of our children," Murugesan’s statement added. According to him, the high-level committee has been moving steadily with “clarity of thought” and in a “collaborative” manner.
The high-level committee was constituted to draft a distinct SEP for Tamil Nadu in 2022. While resigning from his role as the committee’s convenor, Jawahar said that he had to face verbal abuse from Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin's secretary T Udhayachandran IAS. He also said that he was forced to follow the instructions of Udhayachandran and accused the chairman of the committee Murugesan of functioning in an undemocratic manner.