Shillong, Sept 12: Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma on Tuesday warned that the affiliation of the colleges with the North Eastern Hill University (NEHU) will be impacted if they fail to implement the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020.
“The registration or their affiliation with the central university will be impacted. Those impacts will be there but that is not going to happen today, it is not a threat that we are using but I am presuming after 4-5 years when they have to go for renewal of their affiliation, I am sure this condition will come in and the question will arise,” Sangma told reporters.
His statement came a day after the teachers of 22 colleges under the banner of the Meghalaya College Teachers’ Association (MCTA) decided to continue with their ongoing non-cooperation movement (NCM) as a mark of protest against the NEHU VC’s refusal to withdraw the July 12-notification, which asks all affiliated colleges to implement NEP from the current academic year.
The CM however refused to further comment on the matter citing that he doesn’t have the details with him at the moment.
Stating that the State is going ahead with the NEP implementation, Sangma said, “There is no going back on that.” He also urged individuals and colleges to come forward and discuss the issues they have with the State government.
“We can discuss the problems that you have, maybe the problems that you are seeing are actually not even there so maybe some clarity or some discussion is required. There are some misunderstandings but we will clarify those,” he added.
The CM said the government is ready to talk to MCTA and address their concerns.
“I again welcome them all whoever has concerns please come, our education minister is willing to meet and if necessary I am also available anytime if you need clarification, we are there to clarify,” he added.
Further, Sangma said he had spoken to many principals and most of them have expressed that they want to go ahead with the NEP implementation and the government has assured to extend the support they needed.
Meanwhile, the chief minister said there is no direct funding from the Centre as far as implementation of the NEP is concerned.
“…the Centre has been helping us in different ways (but) there is no specific guidelines from the government saying we will give this much money for NEP implementation,” he said.
According to him, indirectly the Centre is helping all the states whether it is for the creation of infrastructure at the college level, whether it is in terms of support for training etc.
“I thank GOI, especially the education minister, who has been very supportive of Meghalaya in every step. He has always supported us. I don’t want to say that they are not helping but direct funding for NEP that is not there,” Sangma said.
