Targeting the prime minister, Bharatiya Janata Party on Friday accused him of leading his party and government in attacking and subverting constitutional institutions in a bid to shield corruption and demanded a probe by Supreme Court appointed SIT into coal blocks issue.
The 19-member National Syllabus and Teaching Learning Material Committee (NSTC) will be headed by National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration (NIEPA) chancellor MC Pant and develop textbooks for classes 3 to 12.
The National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT), however, said the withdrawal of anyone's association is out of question as textbooks at the school level are developed on the basis of knowledge and understanding on a given subject and at no stage, individual authorship is claimed.
The 15-nation Council met on Friday to vote on the resolution tabled by the United Arab Emirates and backed by over 90 member states. The resolution got the backing of 13 Council members who voted in its favour while the United Kingdom abstained.
"A controversy is going on these days that Darwin's theory of evolution has been removed from science books by the NCERT and the periodic table has been left out, but I would like to state here publicly that nothing of this sort has happened," he said.
The committee has also recommended highlighting 'Hindu victories' in various battles in the textbooks.
The resolution proposed by Russia that called for a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza but made no mention of Hamas' attack on Israel.
The UN Security Council on Wednesday failed to adopt a Brazil-led draft resolution that would have called for humanitarian pauses in the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict to allow full access for aid to the Gaza strip after the US vetoed the text.
References to freedom fighter and India's first education minister Azad have been removed from the new class 11 political science textbook by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT).
The transmogrification of Prime Minister Modi to Saint Modi began with the ground-breaking ceremony of the Ram temple in Ayodhya. By identifying himself with Lord Ram, Modi raised himself in popular imagination to a saintly person.
'Bharat is a name that is 7000 years old.' 'We are not saying the name of the country should be changed from India to Bharat; we only recommended that the stress should be on Bharat.'
The signatories to a letter sent to NCERT Director Dinesh Saklani include Kanti Prasad Bajpai, a former Jawaharlal Nehru University professor who currently serves as the vice dean at the National University, Singapore, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, a former vice-chancellor of the Ashoka University, Rajeev Bhargava, a former director of CSDS, Niraja Gopal Jayal, a former JNU professor, Nivedita Menon, a JNU professor, Vipul Mudgal, the head of civil society watchdog Common Cause, K C Suri, a former professor at the University of Hyderabad who is now associated with the Gitam University, and Peter Ronald deSouza, a former director of the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies.
"We teach our students using NCERT books...whatever is there in the revised edition will be followed," Deputy Chief Minister Brajesh Pathak said.
The Left leader said the NCERT, which was set up on the basis of the 2005 National Curriculum Framework, has been demolishing the very goals of the NCF through the removal of such passages from textbooks.
References to freedom fighter and India's first education minister Maulana Abul Kalam Azad have been removed from the new class 11 political science textbook by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT).
The NCERT has dropped references to the demand for a separate Sikh nation of Khalistan from the class 12 political science textbook following objections from the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC), according to top education ministry officials.
As per the NCERT, the decision has been taken to reduce the content load on students in view of the COVID-19 pandemic.
A number of academicians as well as political scientists Yogendra Yadav and Suhas Palshikar, who were part of the textbook development committee of the NCERT, had asked the council to drop their names from textbooks over 'several substantive revisions of the original texts'.
"Gandhi's pursuit of Hindu-Muslim unity provoked Hindu extremists" and "Organisations like RSS were banned for some time" are among the texts missing from the class 12 political science textbook for the new academic session.
Ever since Nitish embarked on the slippery path of trying to unite the Opposition against the BJP, he has repeatedly rebutted suggestions that the exercise was aimed at bringing himself centre stage. The problem is: It is not enough if he says so. Others have to say so as well, especially Congress, observes Aditi Phadnis.
His comments come after the new NCERT textbooks hit the market and it was found that more contents than the ones notified in the curriculum rationalisation booklet last year are missing.
19 per cent of all travel in India (by bus, train or air) was pilgrimage or religious travel (possibly the single largest after business and family-related travel), discovers Ambi Parameswaran.
Palshikar and Yadav, who were chief advisors for the original Political Science books for classes 9 to 12, said, "While the modifications have been justified in the name of rationalisation, we fail to see any pedagogic rationale at work here. We find that the text has been mutilated beyond recognition. There are innumerable and irrational cuts and large deletions without any attempts to fill the gaps created.
The SERT, an autonomous body of the general education department, is considering a decision by its curriculum steering committee to include these deleted portions in the state syllabus.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) will maintain the policy repo rate at 6.5 per cent during its upcoming June 8 announcement, considering the easing of retail inflation in April and the potential for further decline, indicating the effectiveness of previous policy rate actions, anticipate experts. Headed by Reserve Bank Governor Shaktikanta Das, a meeting of the six-member Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) is scheduled for June 6-8. The decision of the 43rd meeting of the MPC would be announced on Thursday, June 8.
Certain references and subjects being quietly dropped from the new NCERT textbooks without any notification has kicked off a political controversy with the Opposition accusing the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party of 'whitewashing with vengeance'.
The Theory of Evolution, proposed by the English naturalist, explains that all living beings evolved through natural selection, which favours inherited traits that improve an individual's ability to compete, survive, and reproduce.
Saxena, who became the Delhi LG in May 2022, is an accused, along with three others in a case of alleged attack on Patkar for opposing the Narmada dam project.
Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia, the party's Rajya Sabha members Sanjay Singh and Raghav Chadha as well as its Gujarat chief ministerial face Isudan Gadhvi also figure in the list shared with the media on Tuesday night.
'They know Sharad Pawar will be playing a huge role in unifying the Opposition.'
Nationalist Congress Party leader Ajit Pawar on Monday said he was not unhappy with his party, nor had it neglected him.
This will be the Delhi chief minister's third consecutive term in the wake of the Aam Aadmi amending its constitution in January 2021 to make way for a three-term convenor
The RBI's Monetary Policy Committee brainstormed the impact of any future shocks on the inflation trajectory and stressed monitoring the cumulative effect of monetary policy actions over the past one year, which is still unfolding, revealed minutes of the rate-setting panel released on Thursday. The minutes of the meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), headed by Reserve Bank Governor Shaktikanta Das, also indicated it would be premature to declare an end to the monetary tightening cycle, which started in May 2022 to check high inflation following the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine war. The central bank, which effected six back-to-back hikes in the key short-term lending rate (repo) since May 2022 to check high inflation, decided to take a pause early this month.
Kumar, whose "national role" has become a matter of much speculation since his break-up with the Bharatiya Janata Party last month, however also sought to rule himself out, for the umpteenth time, of the Prime Ministerial race.
The Union government could target a fiscal deficit of 5.8-6 per cent of nominal GDP for 2023-24, and it should continue its capital expenditure push and look to simplify the personal income tax regime, economists recommended Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and her team during their pre-Budget interaction on Monday. Starting last week, Sitharaman had eight pre-Budget consultations this time. More than 110 invitees representing seven stakeholder groups participated in these meetings, the finance ministry said in a statement. The stakeholder groups included representatives and experts from agriculture and agro-processing industry; industry, infrastructure & climate change; financial sector and capital markets; services and trade; social sector; trade unions and labour organisations; and economists.
The government on Friday appointed Suman K Bery as the vice chairman of Niti Aayog, following the sudden resignation of Rajiv Kumar.
The tourism industry plays a vital role in the town, accounting for 70 per cent of its economy, according to experts.
The Reserve Bank's rate setting panel on Thursday met to finalise a report for the government on why it failed to keep retail inflation below the target of 6 per cent for three consecutive quarters since January this year, said sources. The report will be presented to the government as per the Reserve Bank of India Act, they added. The six-member Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) is headed by Governor Shaktikanta Das.
'It was Maulana Azad's foresight which created the IITs, UGC, science academies across the country.'
As the Kejriwal empire spreads, will he be able to keep the momentum going? And will it be at the cost of greater centralisation of authority in the party, asks Aditi Phadnis.
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