Panel set up to examine political science textbooks

The government has set up a panel headed by former UGC chairman SK Thorat in the wake of the cartoon row to review NCERT's political science textbooks for schools.

The government has set up a panel headed by former UGC chairman SK Thorat in the wake of the cartoon row to review NCERT's political science textbooks for schools.

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The committee, which has five members from the social sceince background, will review Class 11 to 12 social science/political science textbooks of NCERT from the point of view of identifying educationally inappropriate material in them, said a NCERT notification.

The members of the committee are AS Narang (School of Social Sciences IGNOU), Patricia Mukhim (the editor Shillong Times and social worker), Prof MSS Pandian, Abha Malik (teacher of social science of Sanskriti School) and Saroj Yadav (head of department of education in social science, NCERT).

Thorat, who is now the chairman of Indian Council of Social Science Research will be the vhairman of the committee and submit his report within one month.

HRD minister Kapil Sibal, who announced the setting up of the committee in Parliament on Monday following uproar over the cartoon of BR Ambedkar in NCERT textbooks, has made it clear that cartoons on the political class should not find a place in textbooks as they influence the impressionable minds of students.

"We believe textbooks are not the place where these issues should be influencing impressionable minds. That's our position," he said.

Sibal said the reprinted books after removal of the objectionable content will be made available to students within one month.

Yogendra Yadav and Suhas Palshikar, who as advisors of the textbook had approved the cartoon, had stepped down after the row.