Source : INDIA TODAY NEWS
Four months after being pulled from shelves following a Supreme Court order, NCERT’s controversial Class 8 Social Science textbook is set to return.
India Today has learnt from top sources within NCERT that Exploring Society: India and Beyond is expected to be reissued in a revised form by the third week of June.
WHAT CHANGED?
The textbook was banned in February after the Supreme Court objected to portions of Chapter 4 that discussed corruption in the judiciary and the huge backlog of pending court cases.
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The court ordered the immediate withdrawal of all physical and digital copies. NCERT subsequently issued an unconditional apology and described the inclusion of the content as an “error in judgement”.
Following the controversy, the council set up an expert review committee to examine the textbook and recommend changes.
According to sources, all references to judicial corruption have now been removed from the revised edition.
The controversy had also drawn attention because the Supreme Court’s March 11 order effectively barred three academics associated with the textbook’s preparation — Padma Shri awardee Michel Danino, educator Suparna Diwakar and legal scholar Alok Prasanna Kumar — from participating in publicly funded curriculum and textbook work.
While the Supreme Court initially directed governments and publicly funded institutions to disassociate from them, in May, it recalled that direction and removed adverse observations against the trio
READY FOR A COMEBACK
The updated manuscript has reportedly completed internal approvals and has already been sent for printing.
The timing is significant because schools across the country are in the middle of the new academic session and many had been left without access to the book after the ban.
Of the 2.25 lakh copies printed earlier, only 38 had been sold before the Supreme Court ordered their seizure.
The revised edition is now expected to hit schools by the third week of June, marking the return of one of the most debated NCERT textbooks in recent years.
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SOURCE :- TIMES OF INDIA
