Why reduced content on Bose, Vivekananda in NCERT books: CIC

The CIC has pulled up NCERT for chopping out content on national leaders like Subhas Chandra Bose and revolutionaries from its text books and directed it to suo-moto disclose the reasons behind such decisions.

In a terse order, the Commission asked NCERT to disclose why content on Swami Vivekananda was reduced from 1250 to 37 words in Class XII history books and completely removed from Class VIII books.

The case reached Information Commissioner Sridhar Acharyulu through a plea of Jaipur-based Suryapratap Singh Rajawat, who criticised non-inclusion of history of eminent personalities and revolutionaries in the NCERT books.

Through a series of RTI applications and public grievance application, Rajawat claimed content on 36 national leaders and revolutionaries like Chandra Shekhar Azad, Ashfaqullah Khan, Batukeshwar Dutt, Ram Prasad Bismil among others was completely missing from history text books of NCERT.

Not getting satisfactory reply, he approached the transparency panel.

During the hearing before the CIC, Rajawat asserted that it was not appropriate to give 37 pages to cricket and history of cloth but nothing on the lives of freedom fighters.