Incumbent and past presidents of the Akhila Bharata Kannada Sahitya Sammelana came down heavily on Minister for Primary and Secondary Education Tanveer Sait on Friday for ignoring their recommendations on school textbooks for the students of Karnataka.
During his speech at the inaugural ceremony of the meet, previous president Baragur Ramachandrappa, who is also the chairman of the Textbook Revision Committee, expressed anger at Mr. Sait for not responding to them and their efforts to introduce regional textbooks from classes 6 to 10.
“After we met the Chief Minister, who said he would to discuss the matter with Mr. Sait and that the latter would contact us, there has been no [communication]. Our efforts to meet him have also failed,” he said.
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During his address, the president of this year’s sammelana Chandrashekar Patil urged the Chief Minister, who was also on the dais, to replace Mr. Sait with “a pro-Kannada Minister”. He, however, clarified that their demand was not to drop Mr. Sait from the ministry, but merely to replace him as head the Department of Primary Education.