HRD Ministry should focus on school education: Digvijay

Updated on: Sunday, September 12, 2010

After his potshots at Home Minister P. Chidambaram, Congress leader Digvijay Singh on Saturday appeared to snipe at HRD Minister Kapil Sibal seeking his attention on school education rather than higher education.

“The need at the moment is that the HRD Ministry should pay more attention to the development of school education and skill development centres rather than higher education and I have full faith that they will look into the matter,” Mr. Singh said.

Mr. Sibal has become the fresh target of Mr. Singh after he took on Mr. Chidambaram, attacking his strategy to tackle Maoists.

He had even called Mr. Chidambaram “intellectually arrogant“.

Earlier this week, Mr. Sibal had hit back at his detractors, who had accused him of rushing an education bill, by invoking Rajiv Gandhi and said the former Prime Minister had desired that the task of imparting quality education should be achieved in a few months.

“If people say that we are in a hurry, then I would like to state that Rajivji had said it in 1985 that this should be achieved in a few months,” Mr. Sibal had said at a function in the presence of Congress chief Sonia Gandhi.

Mr. Sibal’s remarks were seen as an apparent rebuff to detractors like K. Keshav Rao, who had attacked the policies of the HRD Ministry in a debate in the Rajya Sabha that forced the government to defer the Education Tribunal Bill.

During the just-concluded Parliament session, Rao’s attack forced him to defer the Education Tribunal Bill, 2010.

Rao had said, “This kind of hasty legislation for a subject like education does not augur well” and that “his (Sibal’s) thoughts run faster than the deeds of his ministry”.

HRD Ministry should focus on school education: Digvijay

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