Edtech firm Unacademy has taken the decision to terminate the employment of Karan Sangwan, a teacher, after he encouraged his students to cast their votes for educated candidates. The company stated that expressing personal opinions and viewpoints is not appropriate within the classroom environment.
Unacademy’s co-founder, Roman Saini, asserted that Sangwan’s actions constituted a violation of his contractual obligations, compelling the company to sever ties with him.
Following his dismissal, Sangwan started his own YouTube channel and indicated plans to explain the circumstances surrounding the controversy on August 19th.
“From the past few days a video has been going viral due to which I am in controversy and because of that controversy my several students who are preparing for judicial services examinations are facing a lot of consequences. Along with them I have to also face consequences,” Sangwan said.
The video at the heart of the matter featured Sangwan urging his students to consider voting for candidates with strong educational backgrounds in future elections.
In response, Saini took to Twitter to emphasize Unacademy’s commitment to delivering high-quality education through their platform.
“To do this we have in place a strict Code of Conduct for all our educators with the intention of ensuring that our learners have access to unbiased knowledge. Our learners are at the centre of everything we do. The classroom is not a place to share personal opinions and views as they can wrongly influence them. In the current situation, we were forced to part ways with Karan Sangwan as he was in breach of the Code of Conduct,” he said.
The situation garnered attention when Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal questioned whether advocating for educated candidates was a punishable offence. He posted on X, “Is it a crime to appeal to vote for educated people? If someone is illiterate, personally I respect them. But public representatives cannot be illiterate. This is the era of science and technology. Illiterate public representatives can never build the modern India of the 21st century.”
