Leave politics out of education: HRD minister on CBSE syllabus row

HRD Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank on Thursday dismissed the row over reduction of CBSE syllabus as “uninformed commentary” and asked detractors to keep politics out of education.

Nishank said the controversy over the exclusion of certain topics from the CBSE syllabus was an attempt to portray a “false narrative” and the exclusion of certain topics was only a one-time measure and that too for examinations.

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“The exclusions are merely a 1-time measure for exams, due to the #COVID19 pandemic,” the minister said even as opposition parties saw a conspiracy in dropping topics such as federalism, secularism, democratic rights, citizenship from the syllabi for classes IX to XII for the 2020-21 academic year.

“There has been a lot of uninformed commentary on the exclusion of some topics from CBSE Syllabus. The problem with these comments is that they resort to sensationalism by connecting topics selectively to portray a false narrative,” Nishank said.

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The minister said while it was easy to misconstrue exclusion of 3-4 topics like nationalism, local government, federalism, and build a “concocted narrative”, a wider perusal of different subjects will show that this exclusion had happened across subjects.

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“Let us leave politics out of education and make our politics more educated,” Nishank.

The minister said the CBSE had already clarified that schools have been advised to follow the NCERT Alternate Academic Calendar, and all the topics mentioned have been covered under the same.