NEW DELHI, Feb 27: A day after the Supreme Court banned the Class 8 Social Science textbook over a section on “corruption” in the judiciary, the National Council for Education, Research and Training (NCERT) on Friday asked people who have bought the book to return it and take down related social media posts.
The NCERT reiterated that it had withdrawn the Class 8 textbook.
In its advisory issued on Friday, the NCERT called for any “individual or organisation” in possession of the book or any material related to it to return it to the Publication Division of the Department of Education in Social Sciences in New Delhi “at the earliest possible.” Anyone who had posted any material related to the controversial section on social media or online should delete it, it said.
The statement was issued by the office of Himanshu Gupta, Secretary, NCERT, and cited the Supreme Court order in this regard. The Supreme Court had registered a suo motu case on Wednesday in relation to the section that had appeared in a chapter titled “Role of Judiciary in Our Society.” The Chief Justice Surya Kant called the section on “corruption” in the judiciary a “selective reference,” while calling for a suo motu case to be registered.
On Thursday while hearing the case, the Supreme Court had directed that copies of the book that had already been distributed or sold be seized, further asking officials concerned to file a compliance report regarding this seizure. Soon after the Supreme Court heard the issue on Wednesday, the NCERT issued a public statement apologising for the “inappropriate textual material” and “error in judgement” that had “crept into” the said textbook.
A day later, as the controversy intensified, Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan expressed regret and noted that a direction had been issued to withdraw the book as soon as this material was noticed. Government officials claimed that the direction was issued on Tuesday itself, a day after the book was released, and even before the apex court issued the direction.
Sources added that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had also taken notice of the section in question and called for accountability to be fixed. Mr Pradhan told presspersons on Thursday that action would be taken against those found responsible.
The Congress, however, accused the Centre of orchestrating an “RSS-driven exercise full of mischief and malice” in the rewriting of school textbooks and said the Supreme Court of India was “rightly agitated” over the NCERT textbook for class 8.
The Congress communication chief Jairam Ramesh said, “The Supreme Court is rightly agitated over critical references to the judiciary in NCERT textbooks. Actually, the way NCERT textbooks have been rewritten over the past decade is disgraceful, apart from being dangerous,” Mr Ramesh said in an X post. “It has been an RSS-driven exercise full of mischief and malice. It is this racket that needs to be investigated,” he added.
A three-judge Bench comprising Chief Justice Surya Kant, and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and Vipul M. Pancholi had ordered the seizure of all physical and digital copies of the book and issued show-cause notices to the NCERT Director and the Secretary, Department of School Education, asking why contempt proceedings should not be initiated.
(Manas Dasgupta)
