Union Minister for Education Dharmendra Pradhan on Thursday launched the Bharat Bodhan AI Conclave-2026. The conclave marks a significant step in advancing the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) across India’s education ecosystem.The conclave will engage solutions across four priority verticals — AI for school education, AI for higher education, AI for skilling and workforce readiness, and AI research and deep technology.Pradhan said that the two-day conclave brings together academia, industry, policymakers, start-ups, innovators, scientific leadership and the skilling ecosystem to integrate AI in education at scale and develop the ‘Bharat EduAI Stack’.He underlined that India’s AI will be inclusive by design, interoperable by architecture and sovereign by capability. Stressing the importance of embedding AI in education to empower students and support teachers, he called upon all stakeholders to build scalable, responsible, ethical and India-centric sovereign AI models for transforming education and realising the goal of Viksit Bharat.A series of new Artificial Intelligence programmes introduced by the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Lucknow was also launched on the occasion. An MoU was exchanged between IIT Bombay and Columbia University to establish a Centre of AI for manufacturing at IIT Bombay.Ahead of the conclave, Pradhan on February 11 chaired a roundtable with Founders of 10 new-age Indian Startups who use AI in education, at IIT Delhi. The Roundtable brought together policymakers, academic leaders, and emerging technology entrepreneurs to discuss how AI can be leveraged to transform India’s education system, aligning with the objectives of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020