R. Venkata Rao, the former vice-chancellor of the National Law School of India University (NLSIU), V. Kamakoti, the Director of IIT Madras, and Raghuvendra Tanwar, Chairman of the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR), have been appointed to the reformed National Syllabus and Teaching Learning Material Committee (NSTC) under the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT). This restructuring follows the Supreme Court’s intervention regarding an issue related to a section about “corruption in the judiciary” in a previously withdrawn Class 8 social science textbook.
The reconstituted committee was announced in an NCERT notification issued last week and also includes Amarendra Prasad Behera, who serves as the Joint Director-in-Charge at the Central Institute of Educational Technology, NCERT.
According to the NCERT’s notification dated April 2, the NSTC will collaborate with textbook development teams to create curricula and educational materials for various subjects. The chairperson and co-chairperson of the NSTC will assemble these teams in consultation with the Council director and include relevant experts as needed.
Furthermore, the NSTC is permitted to invite additional specialists for advice and support as deemed necessary, with the assistance of a Programme Office established by the NCERT, which will provide the required expertise to meet the NSTC’s needs.
The restructured NSTC consists of 20 members and excludes three individuals who were part of the previous committee: Michel Danino, a former guest professor at IIT Gandhinagar; Bibek Debroy, the former chairman of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council (EAC), who passed away in November; and M.D. Srinivas, chairman of the Centre for Policy Studies in Chennai.
Danino’s removal occurred following a Supreme Court directive that mandated the disassociation of certain committee members from the textbook development team responsible for the controversial chapter on the judiciary, of which he was one.
In a March 10 affidavit submitted to the Supreme Court regarding the textbook section on “corruption in the judiciary,” Debroy’s name was noted as a member of the NSTC.
In a ruling from March, the Supreme Court expressed disappointment over the absence of prominent legal experts in the NSTC, particularly given the intent to educate young students about the judiciary and legal matters, while leaving the committee’s reconstitution to the discretion of the appropriate authority.
The Supreme Court had initiated a suo motu case concerning the contentious section on “corruption in the judiciary” in the Class 8 social science textbook, released in February. The court criticized the chapter as a deliberate effort to undermine the judiciary’s dignity and imposed a complete prohibition on the publication, reprinting, or digital distribution of the textbook.
In parallel, Danino, Suparna Diwakar, and Alok Prasanna Kumar have filed a petition with the Supreme Court seeking to overturn the “blacklisting” order issued against them.
Among those retained in the reconstituted NSTC are M.C. Pant, the former Chancellor of the National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration (NIEPA), who continues as chairperson, and Princeton University mathematics professor Manjul Bhargava, serving as co-chairperson. Additionally, 14 former committee members have been retained, including EAC-PM member Sanjeev Sanyal, Infosys Foundation chairperson Sudha Murty, singer Shankar Mahadevan, former national badminton coach U. Vimal Kumar, Chamu Krishna Shastry, chairman of the Bharatiya Bhasha Samiti, and Gajanan Londhe, head of the NSTC’s programme office.
The NSTC, initially constituted in 2023 with 19 members, was charged with the development of the school syllabus and new textbooks in accordance with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 and the National Curriculum Framework for School Education (NCFSE) 2023.
The original 2023 notification outlining the NSTC’s formation included provisions for curricular area groups (CAGs), which were to be established by the chairperson and co-chairperson of the NSTC. The notification that facilitated the creation of the social science CAG in 2023, chaired by Danino, specified that a subset of this group would then develop the textbooks for the subject. However, the recent notification does not reference the CAG.
For updates and more news, follow us on Instagram.
