'Classroom Not A Place To Share Personal Opinions': Unacademy Co-Founder Roman Saini's Statement On Sacking Faculty Karan Sangwan

Hours after news came in that Ed-Tech company Unacademy had fired its faculty Karan Sangwan, whose video asking students to vote for an "educated or literate leader in coming elections" had gone viral, the co-founder of the online learning platform issued a statement late evening on Thursday (August 17) and took to X (formerly Twitter) to explain their reason behind terminating the faculty, calling Sangwan's act a "breach of the Code of Conduct". "The classroom is not a place to share personal opinions and views as they can wrongly influence them (students)," the statement further read.

"We are an education platform that is deeply committed to imparting quality education. 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," co-founder Roman Saini wrote on X.

The whole controversy broke out after Karan Sangwan, who was a faculty with Unacademy, was seen telling students during one of his online classes that in order to not suffer, it is important to choose leaders who are "padhe-likhe" (educated) and who don't only believe or indulge in changing names.

The comment didn't go down well with several netizens who took to X and shared the clip of Sangwan, asking for action to be taken against him. After days of outrage by several users on X, Unacademy said it was "forced to part ways" with Karan Sangwan. However, the decision to sack its faculty Karan Sangwan also led to controversy as several netizens said that the ed-tech firm had buckled under pressure and given in to online bullying.