Assam to stop naming colleges after Deendayal Upadhyaya

GUWAHATI: The state government has gone back on its decision to name any more model colleges in the state after Hindutva ideologue Deendayal Upadhyaya following criticism from several local organizations.
“We named five model colleges after Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya as this is his birth centenary year. We did it out of respect to his ideology, which has given us two Prime Mini-sters (Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Narendra Modi).We will set up more model colleges, but they will not be named after him,” education minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said in the as-sembly recently.
The state is setting up model colleges, with central assistance, in districts where the gross enrolment ratio in higher education was lower than the national average in 2008-09. Last month, Himanta had announced that all 22 proposed model colleges will be named after Upadhyaya, a founder of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, fo-rerunner of present-day BJP. They are expected to be set up within the next four years.
The decision had faced severe criticism from local organizations, including Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti (KMSS) and All Assam Stu-dents’ Union (Aasu), who had accused the government of trying to saffronize education in the state. Rebel outfit Ulfa (In-dependent) had also issued a warning against naming the institutes after Upadhyaya.
Reacting to the decision, KMSS on Saturday said the government has ultimately bowed down to public outcry. It did, however, dub it as a “positive” outcome. KMSS’s student wing, Satra Mukti Sangram Samiti, defaced sign boards of Deendayal Upadhyaya colleges in Behali, Bongaigaon and Dudhnoi to register its protest. “Now that the government is not going to name the model colleges after Deendayal Upadhyaya, our demand is that the remaining proposed model colleges and other educational institutions be named after renowned personalities who contributed to different fields of Assamese society,” KMSS president Bhasco De Saikia said.