Telangana Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy said the Congress government would soon form a state-level advisory committee with experts from various fields to offer recommendations on improving the quality of education, and generating employment. The committee will be headed by the Chief Minister, while intellectuals and activists such as Professor Haragopal, Akunuri Murali, Professor K Nageshwar, and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) Telangana president RS Praveen Kumar will likely be appointed as the members.
The CM made this announcement during an interaction with journalists on Monday, January 1. The council would advise the government on refining the curriculum, which would help students find employment. The appointments of the Vice-Chancellors would also be done after consulting with the advisory council, the CM said.
It is to be noted that civil rights activist Haragopal and former IAS officer Akunuri Murali were staunch critics of Telangana’s previous Chief Minister, Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) supremo K Chandrasekhar Rao. Murali, a Dalit IAS officer, quit the service in 2019 after facing alleged discrimination. A year before he opted for voluntary retirement, Murali as the Collector of Jogulamba Gadwal district had made comments against “Brahminical culture” while promoting the consumption of meat for better health.
“Brahmanical culture has set several norms about a person’s eating habits. They are obstructing a person from eating what he likes. Several elderly people have told me that they used to be healthy when they used to eat beef. Now that Brahmins have opposed the slaughtering of cows, they are not able to eat beef,” he had said.
Subsequently, Murali was shunted to work as the Director General of Telangana State Archives and Research Centre for Ethno Sociology. After quitting services, Murali actively campaigned against the KCR government, highlighting its failures in the education sector and its alleged corruption in the Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation project.
RS Praveen Kumar, a Dalit IPS officer-turned politician, previously worked as the Secretary of the Telangana Residential Welfare Schools. He has the credit of overhauling the government-affiliated schools and enhancing its performance through various measures. Under him, several students from the marginalised communities were able to get seats in prestigious universities such as the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, and Delhi University among others.
According to the Chief Minister, all the state universities, proposed skill upgradation, and development universities would be brought under the ambit of the advisory council.
The new advisory council is also expected to have experts from the tech industry, who will advise the CM on mechanisms to generate employment.