Sharad Pawar 'endorses' Cong-led Karnataka govt's move to revise textbooks

Nationalist Congress Party President (NCP) Sharad Pawar on Friday, has indirectly supported the decision of the new Congress government in Karnataka to drop chapters from school textbooks on RSS founder K.B. Hedgewar and Veer Savarkar.

Interacting with the media, Pawar said that in Karnataka, the Congress had announced certain decisions in its manifesto before the elections.

"In the elections, the people gave a majority to the Congress. This means that its manifesto was accepted by the masses. It's the responsibility of the government to implement the approved program and the Karnataka government has started doing it," said Pawar.

Referring to the latest move, Pawar pointed out that childhood is a very formative age and, at this age, there is a tradition to make only such statements that will have a good impact on the children's minds.

"It will not be right if there is something in the academic curriculum that will disturb the social fabric or unity," said Pawar, willy-nilly endorsing the Karnataka government move.

Taking potshots at the recent 'ads blitzkrieg' resorted to by the ruling Shiv Sena Chief Minister Eknath Shinde that riled its ally Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Pawar said that "because of those advertisements, our enlightenment has increased".

"Actually, we were under the impression that the BJP was having an upper hand in the government in Maharashtra but the advertising has improved our knowledge. We thank them for informing Maharashtra through these ads of their historic work and how the BJP's contribution is not much," said Pawar with a sly grin.

He added that those who did the work of giving these ads have done something "beneficial" for the print medium, while his daughter and NCP Working President Supriya Sule said they are trying to find out the unknown 'well-wishers' who released those huge ads in Maharashtra media for two consecutive days.

Pawar also touched upon the law-and-order situation in the state in the wake of recent incidents of violence against women, the unsolved issues of the agriculture sector and others in his interaction.

"The present day rulers are just making tall promises but not implementing them. There are many areas like unemployment, doubling the income of farmers, inflation, etc. Transformation is the only option now to rectify all these things," asserted Pawar.

Pawar's media chat came during a party conference in Jalgaon where the top brass had assembled to chalk out its future political and electoral strategies for upcoming civic elections and the Lok Sabha and Assembly polls in 2024.