The Tamil Nadu government will not allow any non-governmental organisation (NGO) to penetrate the educational system with their ideology, School Education Minister Anbil Mahesh Poyyamozhi said in the Assembly on Thursday.
Responding to VCK legislator J. Mohamed Shanavas (Nagapattinam), who raised an issue in the House, Mr. Poyyamozhi said the said NGO was only sponsoring the setting up of a smart lab. “We will not allow NGOs that attempt to propagate any ideology within our educational system to do so,” he said.
Mr. Shanavas had said that an NGO named Agastya and some others were attempting to propagate ideologies within the State’s education system. He underlined that the State government should streamline the appointment of vice-chancellors in State-run universities. He also said that the reservation system should be followed in the appointment of vice-chancellors. “It is ironical that certain activities in Periyar University in Salem are against Thanthai Periyar’s principles, and the State’s autonomy had been affected intefered in the case of a university named after our leader Annadurai,” he said.
The legislator said though the DMK government has rejected the National Education Policy, and was coming up with its own State Education Policy, there were some people, who were against social justice, holding significant posts dealing with the State’s education system. He said there was a need to identify and remove them. Some had even included thoughts against the Dravidian movement in publications, he said.
Responding to him, Higher Education Minister K. Ponmudi said there were certain complaints about such publications in the Tamil Nadu Open University and the State government had removed them.
