A couple of days ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Teachers’ Day address that has kicked up a controversy, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu have made known their disinterest in making arrangements for its telecast in their Government schools.
Modi will be the first Prime Minister to address the teachers and students on the designated day. Convention has only the President of India addressing the teachers. Before Modi speaks, President Pranab Mukherjee too will address on the occasion at Vigyan Bhawan on Friday.While West Bengal Education Minister Partha Chatterjee said there was neither the time nor the infrastructure for making such arrangements in schools, Tamil Nadu government said it would stick to the “Teachers’ Day” tag, avoiding any reference to “Guru Utsav” anywhere in the celebrations.
With an aim to ensure wider reach of Modi’s interaction with school students, live streaming will also be made available through web channels of Doordarshan, PMO and the HRD Ministry. The interaction will start from 3 pm and will continue till 4.45 pm.
Modi will address about 1000 students in the Manekshaw Auditorium in the Capital which will be broadcast live by all Doordarshan channels and the radio. The Prime Minister would also take questions from some students from across the country through a video-conference facility.
“We will be very busy with our own programmes. Our Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee will felicitate teachers at Netaji Indoor Stadium on the day,” Chatterji said. Many private schools in the city too said they would not be able to make arrangements for the programme.
A senior TN official said the State Education Department will stick to Teachers’ Day tag and avoid using new references. Asked if the government would make arrangements to show interaction of the Prime Minister with children in State-run schools, the official said, there “are no plans as of now,” and added that some of the private schools, be it matriculation or CBSE, were free to show the interaction. Only the Kendriya Vidyalayas will have a direct interaction with the PM through video-conferencing live streaming on the web would also be made available to ensure maximum ‘audience’. The web streaming will be available on www.Youtube.Com/user/ DDNewsofficial, www.Youtube.Com/user/HRDMinistry, www. Pmindiawebcast.Nic.In and Youtube.Com/user/DoordarshanNational, said a government statement on Wednesday.
HRD Minister Smriti Irani had earlier said the attendance of students to listen to and watch the PM’s speech was a “voluntary” exercise, amid a row that listening to his speech was being made mandatory for the children.
Meanwhile, ministry officials held a series of meetings in the run up to the event today and made rounds of Manekshaw Auditorium to oversee arrangements for the programme. CBSE has requested schools to make arrangements to “assemble” the children so that they may view the prime minister’s address.