‘Not fly-by-night academics’: Scholars at centre of NCERT textbook row move Supreme Court against ‘blacklisting’ order

The Supreme Court had taken suo motu cognisance of the matter following a report in The Indian Express on February 24 and sought responses from NCERT and the Centre. Hearing it on March 11, the court directed the Centre, state and Union Territory governments, all universities, and public institutions receiving government funds “to dissociate with” the three academics involved in the preparation of the book.

While the court imposed the restriction, it allowed the scholars to seek modification of the order with a formal explanation.

“We have filed our affidavits where we have given our explanation because the observations that have come in your previous two orders have, apart from directing blacklisting of us for the future, also cast some grave doubts about our learning and knowledge, etc. We have filed applications as well…”, Sankaranarayan told the bench and requested the court to hear them.

The CJI asked, “Are you defending your action?”

Sankaranarayanan said, “We are giving a context, and we are showing your lordships the new pedagogy that has come in from the National Education Policy, including how other issues, because I was present that day, the Indian Express article was shown to your lordships, saying that the judiciary has been singled out…”

“Class 6, Class 7 textbooks do deal with issues and hurdles and obstacles and challenges that are faced by the legislature, executive and the Election Commission. All of those have been dealt with. We wanted to show your lordships the processes that are followed.”

He added, “These are not fly-by-night academics… The author (Alok Prasanna), in fact, has appeared before your lordships, has been an advocate of this court. Once that is placed, your lordships may consider it,” Sankaranarayanan submitted.

Datar said, “Your lordships have asked us to file an application with explanation. So that has been done…We have given a detailed explanation as to how it was done.”

Sai Deepak said, “We have filed a similar application basically explaining the process…The sum and substance of the application is that this was a collective process and no individual had the sole say or the final authority.”

Review committee formed

Meanwhile, the Centre Monday informed the bench that it had constituted a committee comprising Justice Indu Malhotra (Retired) , Senior Advocate K K Venugopal and Prakash Singh, Vice Chancellor of Garhwal University, to review the contents of the chapter.

Additional Solicitor General K M Nataraj, appearing for the Centre, also said the government had, by a notification dated April 2, reconstituted the National Syllabus and Teaching Learning Material Committee (NSTC) with M C Pant as the chairman.