The Tamil Nadu government has announced an extension of the deadline for the State Education Policy (SEP) high-level committee to submit its report. State Minister for School Education Anbil Mahesh Poyyamozhi made this announcement in a statement issued on Saturday, May 20. The new deadline for the SEP report has been set for September.
In addition to the deadline extension, two new members have been appointed to the committee. According to the statement, D Freeda Gnana Rani, former principal of Quaid-E-Milleth Government College for Women, and G Palani, HoD of the Department of Tamil Literature at Madras University, are the newly added members.
The statement from the education department also emphasized that the committee is functioning independently without any interference from government officials, addressing allegations made by former committee member L Jawahar Nesan.
Professor and former vice chancellor of Saveetha University, Jawahar, had resigned from the committee, alleging that the State Education Policy closely follows the National Education Policy and citing verbal abuse from T Udhayachandran, the then-secretary to Chief Minister MK Stalin. Jawahar also claimed bureaucratic interferences from senior IAS officers during the formulation of the SEP. However, committee chairperson D Murugesan refuted these claims, labeling them baseless.
The Tamil Nadu government had formed a 13-member panel in June 2022 to formulate a distinct state education policy that considers the interests of education and the future of the youth in Tamil Nadu. Retired Delhi High Court Judge D Murugesan was appointed as the chairman of the committee. The government had initially provided a one-year duration for the committee to submit its recommendations.
Alongside Murugesan and Jawahar, the committee includes members such as Professor Ramanujam from the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, professors Sultan Ismail and Ramu Seenuvasan, former education specialist at UNICEF Aruna Ratnam, writer S Ramakrishnan, chess grandmaster Viswanathan Anand, musician TM Krishna, educationist Tulasidas, writer S Madasamy, headmaster R Balu of the Panchayat Union Middle School in Keechankuppam, Nagapattinam district, and Jayasree Damodaran of Agaram Foundation.
