'One-sided monologue': Punjab education minister on Shiksha Samelan 2025 to celebrate NEP

Punjab’s education minister S Harjot Singh Bains has strongly criticised the Akhhil Bhartiya Shiksha Samelan 2025, organised by the Union ministry of education at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi. Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan was the chief guest at the national-level event.

Minister Bains expressed disappointment, stating that while education ministers from across the country were invited, the event turned into a “one-sided monologue” with no score for discussion.

He emphasised that critical issues were overlooked during the event. Among them was the exclusion of Punjabi as a main subject by the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), despite it being one of the 22 scheduled languages under the constitution.

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No discussion on school tragedy in Rajasthan, most painful, says Bains

The CBSE placed Punjabi in the same category as foreign languages such as Thai, German, and Mandarin. However, the Punjab government registered strong protests that Punjabi was included as a main subject, he added.

Bains also alleged that the deeper agenda of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 is to undermine state’s rights by confining regional languages to optional subjects.

Furthermore, he expressed concern that key contemporary educational topics such as artificial intelligence, coding, and data science were not discussed at the event.

“Most painful is no mention of the recent Jhalawar, Rajasthan tragedy where innocent school children lost their lives, nor any dialogue on preventing such incidents,” Bains wrote on his official X account following the event.