The Supreme Court on Friday recalled its observations against three academics – Prof. Michel Danino, Suparna Diwakar and Alok Prasanna Kumar—censured by it for “offending” contents on corruption in the judiciary in a Class 8 Social Science textbook chapter of the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT).
A three-judge Bench led by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant left it open to the Centre, states, Union territories, public universities and institutions receiving funds from the Central/state governments to take an independent decision on the issue, without being influenced by its observations made in the March 11 order.
The Bench, which also included Justice Joymalya Bagchi and Justice Vipul M Pancholi, recalled the part of the March 11 order that said the three academics had “deliberately and knowingly misrepresented the facts” in order to project a negative image of the Indian judiciary to Class 8 students.
However, it said, “We leave it to Union/State/other authorities to take an independent decision without being influenced by the observations made in our above-stated order.”
The court had passed the March 11 order after being told that the chapter was drafted by the textbook development team under Danino’s chairmanship and consisting of Diwakar and Kumar as members.
Friday’s order on a plea filed by the trio explaining their stand that no particular individual had the sole say in the drafting of the content and that it was a collective process. Senior advocates, Shyam divan, J Sai Deepak and Gopal Sankaranarayanan urged the Bench on their Behalf that remarks should be recalled as they were academics of repute and the adverse remarks would have “far-reaching consequences” affecting their right to livelihood.
The court clarified that its comments were made in context of the contents and not the individuals.
Earlier, the top court took suo-motu cognisance of the matter and initiated a case titled ‘In Re: Social Science textbook for Grade-8 (part-2) published by NCERT and ancillary issues’.
On March 11, it had directed the Centre and all states to disassociate from the three academics involved in preparing the controversial content of the book in question. It had directed the Centre to form a committee of domain experts within a week for the purpose of finalising the curriculum of the NCERT’s legal studies for not only Class 8 but higher classes as well.
On February 26, the top court imposed a ‘blanket ban’ on any further publication, reprinting or digital dissemination of the NCERT’s Class-8 social science textbook that contained the ‘offending’ contents on corruption in the judiciary, saying they have fired a gunshot and the judiciary is ‘bleeding’.
