BENGALURU: Minister for Primary and Higher Education S Suresh Kumar on Wednesday announced the suspension of Director of Secondary Education KS Mani, and three other officials from the department pending an inquiry, a day after The New Indian Express carried a front page article, ‘Furore over Ambedkar’s misrepresentation in circular’. The reason for suspension of the four has been cited as violating instructions, and dereliction and breach of duty while causing embarrassment to the department for showing the Father of the Indian Constitution in poor light.
The Indian Constitution Protection Forum on Wednesday filed a complaint with the city police commissioner against Principal Secretary, Primary and Secondary Education, SR Umashanker, Commissioner of Public Instruction KG Jagadeesh, Director of Secondary Education KS Mani, and Chief Executive Officer of the NGO, CMCA, Ashish Patil. CMCA is the organisation that wrote the controversial manual. The Forum requested police to book them for anti-national activities, insulting Dr Ambedkar and spreading falsehood among students.
The module in the circular by CMCA, which was posted on the department website on November 6, included a poster which read: “Dr Ambedkar is known as the Father of the Constitution. His job was to look at and put together all the work of the other committees and finally draft our Constitution. He was the chairman of the drafting committee.”
The Dalit community and various sections of society objected to the representation of Dr Ambedkar as just a “compiler” of data while drafting the Constitution. Protests erupted in Bengaluru and Mysuru against showing Dr BR Ambedkar in poor light, whereas he was the one who had drafted the Constitution.
“A departmental inquiry will be held probing their dereliction of duty and flouting of rules,” he said in a post on social media.
In his statement, Suresh Kumar said a private organisation, CMCA, had submitted its manual for Constitution Day celebrations to the department on October 1. On October 3, the director of secondary education was clearly instructed to get the first 25 pages of the manual scrutinised by experts, and bring it to the notice of the Commissioner before the document was uploaded.
However, the document was not brought to the notice of the Commissioner, and was instead uploaded on the department’s website, he said. As soon as the questionable passage was brought to the department’s notice, the manual was taken down from the website, he added.