Remove Nagesh as minister: Bahutva Karnataka

NT Correspondent
Bengaluru

Civil society group Bahutva Karnataka (BK) on Tuesday demanded that Education Minister BC Nagesh should resign from his portfolio and his MLA status be revoked. The Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) enlisted six reasons as to why the minister should quit.

They said that Nagesh had wronged the people of the state by way of textbook revision, delay in delivering of textbooks, failure to respond to the pandemic’s impact on education, not addressing malnutrition, inability to follow his constitutional oath and denial to right to education and dignity.

The group also demanded that eggs be provided to government schools in all districts, education be provided to all children in the state, ensure that Muslim girl students are not harassed and prevented from attending colleges and schools, apart from withdrawal of new textbooks given their allegedly casteist content.

“Textbooks are meant to educate students to become active citizens in a democracy. The unprofessional, unscientific and casteist textbook revision process is violative of Section 29 of the Right to Education Act,” an official statement by Bahutva Karnataka said, adding that the textbooks show contempt towards India’s multiculturalism. “By removing the works of Dalit authors, P Lankesh, Sara Aboobacker and by distorting the historical facts related to Dr Ambedkar and Basavanna, the textbook revision process violates the NCF (National Curriculum Framework) and the RTE (Right To Education) Act,” it added.

“In addition, Nagesh has delayed the distribution of textbooks for more than a month into the academic year. Children already are facing huge learning gaps, but they now do not even have textbooks to learn from. The callousness of the minister has detrimental effects on all students especially those appearing for their board examinations in 2023,” the statement said.

‘Barred hijabi students’

“Nagesh deliberately misinterpreted the orders of the High Court of Karnataka and issued statements, contrary to his own department’s government orders on the issue of allowing girls to wear hijab to the exam hall. His statements led to the aggressive exclusion of Muslim girl students from educational spaces in the pendency of the matter in the Karnataka High Court. He is also guilty of failing to take action against students from the majority Hindu community who indulged in harassment and violence in educational institutions,” it added.

“Bahutva Karnataka asserts that Nagesh has failed to address the learning gap that arose during the Covid- 19 pandemic. The pandemic has also resulted in large scale student dropouts. As per the government’s own data, out of 46,000 students who dropped out, only 35 per cent had rejoined school,” the statement said.