AGARTALA, Sep 19 (TIWN): After independence this is for the first time initiative has been taken for the formulation of national education policy. All stake holders are being consulted and the meeting with the North-East region is positive-Union HRD Minister Smriti Irani told this to the media this evening. After a day long hectic activities union minister met the state Chief Minister Manik Sarkar in a courtesy call and talked about different aspects of state education matters. However none was in the CM’s office to brief the meeting with the CM. Emerging out of the CM’s office Ms. Irani, when asked about the outcome of of her meeting with NE ministers termed the meeting with NE education ministers and secretaries as positive. ‘The draft National Education Policy will be published in December’ she told the reporters before leaving the state secretariat to take part in a cultural function organized on her honour.

Earlier Union Minister arrived Agartala in the morning and straightway went to NIT-Agartala to meet students and faculty members. She held five hour long meeting on the proposed new education policy with the ministers and secretaries of the region which was boycotted by the education ministers of Assam, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh. The ministers of Sikkim, Manipur and Tripura however joined the meeting and put before the union minister respective state govt’s position on the new education policy being formulated.

State Education Minister Tapan Chakraborty who had welcomed the union govt’s move to take all the state govt in to confidence on new policy suggested in the meeting that universalisation of education should be mandatory to boost the education scenario of the country. He had also opposed the current policy to promote all the student of class I to VIII to upper class without evaluating their answer paper and demand to bring back past system for the future benefit of nation.

Union minister in her first visit to NIT-Agartala advised all NIT directors to introduce foreign faculty in any special topics and inter NIT student exchange programme for the betterment of the students and higher education. She said the NE region is not lagging behind. It is a very important part of the nation and special attention is being given to this areas. The sense of alienation from the main land is to be discouraged in anyway, Ms. Irani said in the meeting attended by all students and faculty members.