West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee wants to include morality in the school syllabus. On teachers’ day, while addressing a gathering, the chief minister said, “people are good and people are bad. I would request the Education Minister that morality should be included in the syllabus. It is not possible to control corruption totally God could not do that who am I? Bad companions often lead to bad work, people fall prey to it. Morality classes should be given to children early on. If some people do mistakes then that should be rectified.”
This statement of Mamata Banerjee comes at a time when former state education minister Partha Chatterjee is in jail over a teacher recruitment scam. Questions are being raised at the entire School Service Commission over the recruitment scam and the TMC Birbhum chief is behind the bars for cattle smuggling. A couple of bureaucrats too are under CBI ED scanner.
Several charges of corruption have put questions on the honesty of some leaders of TMC as well as the state government.
Sources say that corruption has become the main issue in the party and Mamata is planning to have morality in the syllabus. This is another move to display that the TMC is a morality-driven party.
At a time when SSC job aspirants are sitting on the road, as some teacher candidates did protest by begging in buses, Mamata tried to establish that she has the intention of sorting out the problem. She said, “I can tell you that those who are sitting on road will get justice by our Government, there are some people who do PIL and that’s the problem.”
BJP ‘s Samik Bhattacharya, on the other hand, said, “They are now knee deep in corruption and all these gimmicks will not help.”