NEP, state edu policy almost similar, says Subhas Sarkar

Coimbatore: Union minister of state for education Subhas Sarkar on Wednesday said the state government was following salient features of the National Education Policy (NEP) and its opposition to the same was a political gimmick.
“Tamil Nadu is following the NEP instructions through its state education policy. If you go through the NEP document and the state education policy, you will learn that they are almost similar,” he told the reporters on the sidelines of the 33rd graduation day ceremony at the Sri Krishna College of Technology here.
Sarkar said the ruling party ministers and leaders were opposing the NEP just for the sake of political agenda.He said the Centre was ready to incorporate suggestions from the state education policy, if the same was better than the NEP. “The Centre has already invited states to submit their best practices in education. We are ready to accommodate them.”
Asked if there were any plans to establish a centrally funded educational institution in the district, the minister said the state government was yet to make any representations to the Union government in that regard.
Addressing the graduates, Sarkar lauded the NEP stating its aim was to promote the growth of world-class higher education institutions and deliver greater freedom for the students to pursue a variety of courses. He said the NEP was the single biggest change that happened in the Indian education system in the past few decades.
The minister recalled how the Centre worked tirelessly for the improvement of the educational sector both at the school and the higher education level.
As a wake-up call for India, Sarkar said India needed to build the expertise and technology to produce critical products indigenously in the near future. “True Aatmanirbhar Bharat will be linked to our ability to produce cutting-edge products to meet all our critical needs and ensure that the economy and country can continue to grow unhindered.”
The event was attended by M Balasubramaniam, chairman of Indian Institute of Information Technology Sri City-Chittoor, S Malarvizhi, chairperson and managing director of Sri Krishna Institutions and its trustee K Adhithya.