Taking a strong note of unrest among the youth on education sector and loopholes in the recruitment examinations, the Congress Working Committee (CWC) has directed Chief Ministers of the four Congress-ruled States to prepare comprehensive reports on reforms required in the education sector and examination system.

The direction came from the Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and the Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi at the CWC meeting held in New Delhi on Wednesday. The Chief Ministers of Karnataka, Telangana, Kerala and Himachal Pradesh were asked to consult educationists, academic experts, student organisations and other stakeholders before preparing State-specific Education and Examination Reform Plans. The CMs were given one-month time to complete the entire exercise and submit detailed reports to the party president.

The meeting attended by Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy saw him showcasing the developmental programmes taken by his government. He specifically mentioned about the Socio-Economic, Educational, Employment, Political and Caste (SEEEPC) Survey conducted by the Telangana government, a first-of-its-kind in the country. He pointed out that the State now had a specific caste-wise break of communities.

As part of the party’s massive outreach programme “Chhatron ki Goonj”, Telangana is also likely to host a couple of interactions in select cities and towns. The CWC decided to expand the initiative across the country, with programmes to be organised in nearly 800 cities and small towns. Senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi is expected to personally participate in several of these interactions with students and youth.

It may be mentioned here that the Telangana government has already initiated a series of steps to overhaul the State’s employment ecosystem through massive reform of the Public Service Commission. Faced with a series of high-profile exam paper leak scandals that had rocked the recruitment process in the last one decade, Mr. Revanth Reddy ensured that an aggressive systemic clean-up was taken up by rebranding the Telangana Public Service Commission.

A major initiative was eliminating human tampering and switching to Computer-Based Tests and actively phasing out the traditional manual OMR paper-bubbling format. A strict recruitment timelines and age-relaxations to certain recruitment examinations were introduced.