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

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

In a statement, Congress general secretary in-charge of organisation, K.C. Venugopal, said discussions in the meeting were on how to push back against the RSS’ efforts to drive their “divisive agenda” through the education sector, and on how the Congress-ruled States could emerge as model States in the field of education. Apart from Mr. Kharge and Mr. Gandhi, Wayanad MP Priyanka Gandhi and general secretaries and in-charges of the respective States attended the meeting.

Mr. Venugopal said the meeting decided to hold State-level education seminars with guidance from reputed education experts and stakeholders. “Within a month, Chief Ministers will prepare a thorough action plan based on inputs from these seminars, to ensure reforms in education sectors and to become model States for education,” he said. A national-level seminar with experts would also be held to chalk out the mechanism to roll out these plans. “Chief Ministers will hold presentations on how the RSS’ poisonous agenda is polluting our young minds through the education system, and how the RSS-backed Vice-Chancellors are being appointed to further this dangerous agenda,” he added.

Keralam controversy

The Congress has been maintaining that the Union government’s National Education Policy (NEP), implemented in 2020, is for centralisation, commercialisation, and communalisation of education. While the Congress government in Karnataka had constituted a panel to study the NEP and find the ways to replace it with the State’s own policy, the newly sworn-in Keralam 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. Keralam Chief Minister V.D. Satheesan drew flak for saying that there is no provision for the State to withdraw from the agreement with the Union government on implementing the PM SHRI. He had said in June that only the Union government had the right to withdraw from the agreement after giving a notice of one month. “There was no provision in the agreement to keep the scheme implementation in abeyance either. Kerala became a party to it the moment the agreement was signed,” he had said.