Congress-ruled states will prepare comprehensive action plans for reforms in the education sector within a month following state-level consultations with education experts and stakeholders, Congress general secretary K C Venugopal said on Tuesday, as the party sought to counter what it described as the RSS’s attempt to push a “divisive agenda” through the education system.
Venugopal said the decision was taken at a meeting convened by Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi with chief ministers and education ministers of Congress-ruled states. Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and the party’s general secretaries and state in-charges also attended the meeting.
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In a post on X, Venugopal said the discussions focused on “how to push back against the RSS’ efforts to drive their divisive agenda through the education sector” and on ways in which Congress-ruled states could emerge as “model states” in education.
As part of the plan, state-level education seminars will be organised with the guidance of reputed education experts and other stakeholders. The chief ministers will subsequently prepare detailed action plans within a month, incorporating recommendations emerging from these consultations, he said.
A national-level seminar involving experts will then be held to work out a mechanism for implementing the proposed plans across the Congress-ruled states.
Venugopal said the chief ministers would also make presentations on what the Congress describes as the RSS’s influence over the education system, including its allegation that the organisation’s “poisonous agenda is polluting our young minds” and that “RSS-backed Vice Chancellors are being appointed” to advance such an agenda.
The meeting comes amid an intensifying political contest between the Congress and the BJP-led government over the direction of education policy, curriculum changes and appointments to higher educational institutions. The Congress has repeatedly accused the BJP and the RSS of seeking to reshape educational institutions along their ideological lines, while the BJP and its ideological affiliates have rejected such allegations and defended changes in education as part of broader reforms.
The Congress’s latest initiative is aimed at giving its state governments a coordinated framework for education reforms while also creating a common political and policy response to issues concerning school and higher education.
Venugopal said the exercise would seek to combine expert consultations with concrete state-level action, followed by a national mechanism to implement and coordinate the proposed reforms.