-The Telegraph A one-member committee formed to fix responsibility on individuals for “derogatory” political cartoons in some NCERT school textbooks has refused to blame anyone, highly placed sources have told The Telegraph. The committee, set up by the human resource development ministry under its former secretary B.S. Baswan, has found that officials and experts had followed set guidelines and procedure in preparing these books and had no “ill intentions”. “It said the books...

-The Hindu Shahi Imam of Fatehpuri mosque demands withdrawal of textbooks Even as the controversy over political cartoons in school textbooks is yet to subside, the Muslim community here has objected to two illustrations and the text of a chapter in the Class XI history book published by the National Council of Educational Research and Training under the National Curriculum Framework-2007. Shahi Imam of the Fatehpuri mosque Mohammad Mukarram Ahmed has written to...

-The Telegraph An NCERT survey has found children from the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes lagging behind in education at the primary school level amid a national debate on reservation in promotions for them. The National Achievement Survey, conducted to evaluate the learning achievement of Class V students, found SC/ST students underperforming compared to general students (see chart). Over a lakh students from 6,602 schools in 27 states and four Union Territories were...

-The Indian Express In contrast to the Thorat committee report which had recommended removal of over 20 cartoons from NCERT textbooks, the NCERT’s textbook development committee and national monitoring committee have listed only three-four cartoons for removal. However, the cartoon that is reported to have offended UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi is not in the list, leaving the Kapil Sibal-led HRD ministry in a spot. Highly placed sources said the ministry has asked...

-The Hindu The textbook review panel left much to be desired in ensuring participation in its deliberations, says a dissenting member As a member of the NCERT committee on social science textbooks headed by Professor Sukhadeo Thorat, I have consciously kept away from the media so far. This was so, despite my dissenting note being made public. Now that Prof. Thorat has chosen to describe me as a ‘non-participant member’ of the...