Seek clarifications after understanding NEP, Fadnavis tells Stalin

Maharashtra CM Fadnavis responds to Tamil Nadu CM Stalin's NEP criticism, emphasizes multilingualism and language choice flexibility.

Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Tuesday countered his Tamil Nadu counterpart M.K. Stalin’s criticism, saying he needed a deep understanding of the National Education Policy (NEP) before seeking clarifications from the Prime Minister and asked why he was not open to multilingualism.

Mr. Fadnavis’ response comes a day after Mr. Stalin sought a clarification from the Prime Minister and the Union Education Minister whether the Centre officially endorsed Mr. Fadnavis’ position that “no language other than Marathi is compulsory in Maharashtra as the third language under the NEP”.

Responding to Mr. Stalin’s post on X, Mr. Fadnavis asked him to first study what NEP was, providing a link to a website. He added that the NEP never insisted or made compulsory a language choice but only asked students to study any two Indian languages other than English.

“As far as Maharashtra is concerned, we are open to Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Sanskrit, or any language the students wish to learn as a third language,” he said.

He questioned Mr. Stalin why he was not open to multilingualism and why he had a problem if someone wanted to learn Hindi.