New education policy: Kasturirangan says no efforts to impose Hindi3Photo© timesofindia.indiatimes.com

New education policy: Kasturirangan says no efforts to impose Hindi

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Former Indian Space Research Organisation chief Krishnaswamy Kasturirangan on Wednesday denied that a panel he headed on drafting the National Education Policy was under any kind of pressure.

The first draft of his panel’s report, released on May 31, had recommended that students in non-Hindi speaking states learn a regional language, Hindi and English. Following protests by political leaders mainly in South India, the Centre on Monday tweaked the draft education policy and no more specifies languages for students to study in middle school.

“There was no pressure, and nobody even rang us to say that there was a problem,” Kasturirangan told NDTV during an interview. “I got up one morning to find out that there was tremendous resentment in some southern states. I called up my colleagues, and we sat together and debated our next move. That was how we decided that we should invoke the alternative version of the draft policy instead.”