As already confirmed by Chief Minister V D Satheesan, UDF convenor Adoor Prakash said that the government would go ahead with the PM-SHRI (Prime Minister’s School for Rising India) project.
“There is no way we can withdraw from the project,” Adoor Prakash told reporters on Thursday after the UDF meeting. He said that the MoU was signed by the former education secretary on the advice of the previous LDF government. The CM also had made it seem like the UDF government had no choice but to honour a contract already signed by the LDF government.
If the CM presented the government’s decision on PM-SHRI as a compulsion, the UDF convenor suggested that it was a practical move. “There are funds that the state has to receive from the Centre. It is the responsibility of the state to secure as much of its rightful share of central funds,” Prakash said, indicating that the UDF government is keen to secure central funds Kerala is entitled to even if it meant implementing PM-SHRI.
The BJP-led Centre had linked the disbursal of nearly ₹1200 crore Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) funds to Kerala signing the PM-SHRI agreement. After the LDF government signed the MoU, Kerala had received ₹207 crore of the blocked funds, in two instalments of ₹99 crore and ₹106 crore. Once the LDF government informed the Centre that the PM-SHRI agreement would be kept in abeyance, following a rebellion mounted by the CPI, the Centre stopped the transfer of the remaining ₹1000 crore.
Though the UDF convenor said Kerala would go ahead with PM-SHRI, the UDF’s official stand is that the project’s rollout in Kerala would depend on the Centre’s response to the conditions the UDF government has set. As a point of fact, the UDF’s conditions have not yet been formally submitted before the Centre.
A four-member Cabinet Sub-Committee has been constituted on June 17 to draft a communication plan that would effectively convey to the Centre Kerala’s conditions for implementing PM-SHRI. General education minister M Shamsudheen is the convenor of the committee, and it has higher education minister Roji M John, tourism minister P C Vishnunath and excise minister M Liju as members.
The UDF government has already set two conditions. One, the centre should not interfere in the curriculum framework. Two, Kerala government will pick the schools where the PM-SHRI scheme would be implemented. The Cabinet Sub-Committee’s job is to make a persuasive case for why these conditions must be respected for Kerala to implement PM-SHRI. The Cabinet Sub-Committee is still working on it.
Kerala had signed the MoU with the Centre on October 16, 2025, without prior Cabinet approval or consultation with the LDF partners. It was the revolt of the CPI that eventually forced the Pinarayi government to keep the MoU in abeyance.
The MoU was signed by then general education secretary K Vasuki on behalf of the state government and Additional Secretary Dheeraj Sahu for the Centre. State Education Department Additional Secretary Dr S Chithra and Samagra Shiksha Kerala Director Dr A T Supriya, along with two central officials, were witnesses.
The ideological objection to PM-SHRI is that it encourages the implementation of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, which both the LDF and UDF argue would impose the education agenda of the Sangh Parivar on schools in Kerala.
