Arjun Singh

New Delhi, June 14: India’s apex education advisory body lies in limbo four years after it was revived by Arjun Singh to help formulate crucial policies, because of fears that key appointments to the panel may be violative of the law.

The term of the Central Advisory Board of Education, which helped the Centre draft the Right to Education Bill and laws to regulate private universities and foreign education providers, ended in mid-2007.

But the government is running shy of nominating new members, fearing that MPs on the panel might be accused of violating the office-of-profit law, top officials said.

“With just a few months to go till the end of the government’s tenure, we do not really want to attract any controversy over this issue,” a senior official in the human resource development ministry said.

An office of profit is defined as a government post held by MPs that entitles them to a financial allowance. Certain posts under the central and state governments are exempt from the law, but the education advisory board is not among them.

The board has traditionally included nine ministers and six other MPs — four from the Lok Sabha and two from the Rajya Sabha.

The Centre fears that the Opposition BJP will accuse MPs nominated to the panel of violating the office-of-profit law. Article 102 (1) (A) of the Constitution disqualifies MPs found violating the law.

In March 2006, Congress president Sonia Gandhi resigned her Lok Sabha seat and her post as chairman of the National Advisory Council after the BJP accused her of holding an office of profit. The council, set up to advise the government on the social sector, is not on the list of offices that are exempt.

Several other MPs, including Speaker Somnath Chatterjee, were accused of violating the law.

Earlier this year, the HRD ministry had asked the ministry of law to examine whether MPs on the advisory board could draw charges of violating the office of profit law, a source said. The law ministry asked it to seek the opinion of the ministry of parliamentary affairs, which is now looking into the matter.

The board was established in 1920 to advise the government on education policy, but was dissolved three years later.

It was revived in 1935 and, over the decades, was instrumental in scripting some of India’s most significant policies in the sector, such as the National Education Policy in 1986 during Rajiv Gandhi’s tenure as PM.

But after 1994, when the term of one board ended, it was not reconstituted till 2004, when the UPA took over.

Amid calls from educators and the civil society for greater consultation in education — to prevent a repeat of the alleged “saffronisation” by the BJP — Arjun reconstituted the board in July 2004.

Apart from Union government representatives, Arjun’s advisory board also included MPs from non-Congress parties, all state education ministers, and eminent educators and activists.