Sudha Murty, Shankar Mahadevan among committee members to revise NCERT textbooks

National Syllabus and Teaching Learning Material Committee (NSTC) consists of 19 members, including Infosys Foundation Chairman Sudha Murty, music maestro Shankar Mahadevan, economist Sanjeev Sanyal, and others.

The NSTC will be chaired by MC Pant, the chancellor of the National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration (NIEPA).

The primary responsibility of the committee is to develop textbooks and teaching-learning materials for classes 3 to 12.

These materials will be created for use by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) based on the provided terms of reference.

The committee's main objective is to synchronize the curriculum with the National Curriculum Framework for School Education (NCF-SE), which was formulated by the steering committee led by K Kasturirangan. This alignment is a crucial step in implementing the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020.

Although the final version of NCF-SE has already been submitted to the Ministry of Education, it has not yet been made publicly available. The initial draft of the framework was released in April.

Manjul Bhargav, a mathematics professor at Princeton University, is the co-chair of the committee. Other notable members include mathematician Sujatha Ramdorai, badminton player U Vimal Kumar, MD Srinivas, chairperson of the Centre for Policy Studies, and Chamu Krishna Shastry, chairperson of Bharatiya Bhasha Samiti.

The removal of certain topics and sections from NCERT textbooks in May sparked a major controversy, with the Opposition accusing the BJP-led government of attempting to "whitewash with vengeance."

The heart of the dispute revolved around the fact that while the modifications made as part of a rationalization effort were officially announced, some of the contentious deletions were not disclosed. This fuelled suspicions of an attempt to secretly eliminate these portions.

Even though the NCERT admitted that the omissions in the textbooks might have been accidental, it chose not to reverse the deletions.

According to the NCERT, the removals were carried out based on recommendations provided by experts.