Congress-ruled states to adopt ‘action plan’ against RSS agenda in education

Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge, Lok Sabha LoP Rahul Gandhi, MP KC Venugopal and others during a meeting with Chief Ministers, Education Ministers and AICC officials in New Delhi on September 29, 2026. | Photo credit: PTI

Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge and Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi met the Chief Ministers and Education Ministers of the Congress-ruled states in New Delhi on Tuesday (September 29, 2026). The leaders are learned to have advised them not to implement the Sangh Parivar agenda in the education sector and instead follow student-oriented education policies in their states.

Congress organizing general secretary KC Venugopal said in a statement that the discussions at the meeting were on how to counter the RSS’s efforts to push their “divisive agenda” in the education sector and how Congress-ruled states could become model states in the field of education. Apart from Mr. Kharge and Mr. Gandhi, Wayanad MP Priyanka Gandhi and the general secretaries and commissioners of the respective states also attended the meeting.

Mr. Venugopal said that the meeting decided to organize educational seminars at the state level under the leadership of renowned education experts and stakeholders. “Within a month, ministers will prepare a thorough action plan based on inputs from these seminars to ensure education reforms and become model states for education,” he said. A national level seminar with experts would also be organized to outline the mechanism for implementing these plans. “The chief ministers will give presentations on how the poisonous agenda of RSS is polluting our young minds through the education system and how RSS-backed vice-chancellors are being appointed to promote this dangerous agenda,” he added.

The Keralam Controversy

The Congress insists that the Union government’s National Education Policy (NEP), implemented in 2020, is aimed at centralisation, commercialization and communalisation of education. While the Congress government in Karnataka set up a panel to study the NEP and find ways to replace it with the state’s own policy, the newly formed Kerala government had to face controversies over the implementation of the Centre’s policies such as the PM SHRI (Prime Minister’s Schools for Rising India) scheme. Kerala Chief Minister VD Satheesan drew flak for saying that there was no provision to allow the state to back out of the agreement with the Union government to implement the PM SHRI. In June, he said that only the Union government had the right to withdraw from the agreement after a month’s notice. “There was also no provision in the agreement to delay the implementation of the scheme. Kerala became a party to it the moment the agreement was signed,” he said.

Published – 29 Sep 2026 22:21 IST