Yoga Guru Ramdev’s Patanjali Yogpeeth Trust has decided to establish the first-ever national school Vedic Board.
The Maharshi Sandipani Rashtriya Vedavidya Pratishthan (MSRVP), who is responsible for hiring a private sponsoring body to establish the Bharatiya Shiksha Board (BSB), released an ‘Expression of Interest’ which was responded by The Trust on February 11, 2019, inviting applications for setting up of the Board, for which the last date for submission is over.
The Trust invited applications for performing ‘study and research subjects associated with yajna, organic agriculture, cow urine, nature, and the environment in addition to the study and research of yoga and Ayurveda…”. It has been found that Acharya Balkrishna, Swami Muktananda, and Shankardev are the trustees of the organization.
It was reported that only 3 applications were received by the private players willing to establish the Vedic Board.
The Vedic Board will be established to enhance and promote ‘Indian Traditional Knowledge’, which includes Sanskrit Education, Shastras, and Darsanas, etc. The Board will hold the responsibility to conduct examinations, issue certificates and recognize Gurukuls, pathshalas and schools that will offer Vedic education as a part of their syllabus. The Board will also charge fees for their unique services.
Ramdev’s residential school Acharyakulam in Haridwar, Vidya Bharati schools (run by the RSS) and gurukuls run by the Arya Samaj will be highly benefited by this establishment because that will allow them to introduce their formulated board till Class XII, which CBSE won’t ever allow.
Also, this proposal got rejected by Smriti Irani, the then HRD Minister for introducing Vedic Board as a private board which has never been introduced in history.
It has been reported that the private body that will be shortlisted to sponsor the Vedic Board will receive a formal notice by MSRVP with “with due approval of the government”.
However, MSRVP received only three applications for private bodies to sponsor the board, no confirmation has been received whether deadline will be extended or not, as far as the three applications are concerned the Governing Council of MSRVP, headed under HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar, will analyze the eligibility criteria and shortlist the final body and announce their final pick.
For being eligible to sponsor the Board, the body shall be “involved in preservation, conservation, promotion and propagation of Indian Traditional Knowledge which includes Vedic education, Sanskrit education, Yoga in schools for at least five years”, also the body itself should have been in existence for over 10 years.
The Eligibility Criteria also reveals that that net worth of the private body shall not be less than Rs 300 crore and it should commit a corpus of Rs 50 crore for the board, apart from the development fund.