Dated 07.04.2026 – Opposing the Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan’s claim regarding geographical position of Ujjain and introduction of Mahakal Standard Time (MST) in place of GMT, Dr. Tarun Kanti Naskar, General Secretary of AISEC has issued the following statement:
The recent claim by Union Education Minister Shri Dharmendra Pradhan that “Ujjain is where the Equator and Tropic of Cancer meet” is fundamentally incorrect and represents a shocking disregard for basic science. Geometrically and geographically, this statement is an impossibility. The Equator (0° latitude) and the Tropic of Cancer (roughly 23.5° N latitude) are parallel east-west circles on the Earth’s sphere. Because they are parallel, they can never intersect. Furthermore, while the Tropic of Cancer does pass through central India, the Equator lies entirely south of the country. For the Education Minister to bypass middle-school geography in a public forum is highly concerning. We are well aware of the historical context that before the necessity of global standardization, it was universally common for ancient civilizations to establish their own local prime meridians based on culturally significant cities—just as the Greeks used Alexandria, Islamic scholars used Baghdad, and the French used Paris. In this exact same logical tradition, ancient Indian texts like the Surya Siddhanta considered Ujjain the prime meridian of their coordinate system. However, acknowledging this rich, localized history of ancient astronomy is entirely different from justifying it today by inventing demonstrably false modern geographical claims.
The fact remains: Since all places of Earth with different longitudes have different times, one just has to fix a particular longitude line as the basis and measure the times of all other places with respect to that. It can be any arbitrary line and there is no special significance of this line. It is just that historically the longitude of Greenwich has been adopted internationally as that line.
So it is palpably clear that Shri Dharmendra Pradhan’s only design is to glorify Ujjain’s geographical position, without any scientific basis, for introducing ‘Mahakal Standard Time’ (MST) in place of GMT, thus making our country laughingstock before international community.
We oppose this design of Union Education Minister and demand immediate withdrawal of the statement.
