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SC rejects NCERT's plea to modify orders on curriculum

By J. Venkatesan

NEW DELHI April 12. The Supreme Court today rejected the plea of the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) to permit it to bring out new textbooks on Social Sciences, History and Hindi by modifying the court's earlier orders.

A Bench, comprising S.P. Bharucha, S.V. Patil and H.M. Sema, did not agree to the suggestion of the Solicitor General, Harish Salve, appearing for the NCERT and the Centre, that some of the textbooks, which had not been permitted, could be released if independent persons scrutinised them.

He also submitted that in the perception of the Government there was nothing objectionable whatsoever in any of the textbooks. He suggested that the petitioners could place their objections before independent person — like Sawant (retired judge of the Supreme Court) and the NCERT would as an interim measure, agree to delete any portion which Mr. Justice Sawant found objectionable. He also pointed out that there was no textbook on religion as submitted by the petitioners.

Mr. Salve further said that apart from large number of schools in India, there were many schools abroad which were affiliated to the CBSE and the ban on publication of books under the syllabus was affecting them much to the benefit of the private publishers who were wooing them to take books from them.

However, the Chief Justice said, "let me be very clear about it. The situation is entirely your creation.''

When another senior counsel for NCERT, M.N. Krishnamani, intervened to say that the portions in the History books were deleted only on court orders, he said "no, there is something more to it''.

Senior counsel for the petitioners, F.S. Nariman brought to the notice of the court a circular issued by the CBSE which said that the present textbooks would continue for the academic year 2002-2003, but the textbooks were not made available to the students.

Senior advocate, P.P. Rao, appearing for the CBSE, said if the cheap books published by the CBSE were not allowed to be released, the private publishers would make money by selling them at a higher price.

The Bench said "we are not going to permit the release of books under the new syllabus. The order passed on March 1 read with March 22 shall operate pending final disposal of the petition''. The Bench said that the parties would be at liberty to mention the matter in July (after the summer vacation) before the First Court and seek an early date of hearing.

Passing interim orders on a public interest petition by Aruna Roy and two others, a three-judge Bench had on March 1 stayed the implementation of the new `curriculum' from April 1. However, on March 22, the Bench modified the order and restricted the stay only in respect of textbooks relating to Social Sciences, including History and Hindi.

In its application for modifying the March 22 order, the NCERT submitted that the allegations of deletions from the History textbooks were totally misconceived as altogether a new set of textbooks had been written a set of authors and historians and based on the revised syllabus. No subject or aspect of the Indian society had been ignored or left out in these textbooks as alleged by the petitioners.

The NCERT further submitted that the earlier textbooks contained misrepresentations and facts had not only been presented selectively but also in a slanting manner which had created resentment and anger in certain sections of the society. Similar was the position in respect of Hindi textbooks and in respect of `religion', the NCERT made it clear that there was no such subject at all for the schools.

Grave and irreparable prejudice and hardship would be caused to the NCERT, the CBSE and other respondents if the interim orders of March 1 and 22 were not modified, the application said and sought a direction to this effect.

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