BJP says no to outsiders, meeting on NCERT off

BJP members of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Human Resource Development today prevented four outside experts invited to the meetin...

BJP members of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Human Resource Development today prevented four outside experts invited to the meeting from giving their views on the new NCERT textbooks on social sciences and history.

Bipan Chandra, Anil Sadgopal, C.J. Dasvani and Arjun Dev had been asked to come by committee chairperson Arjun Singh but the BJP members objected, saying the experts were known for their ‘‘anti-NCERT views’’.

The two-day meeting was called off by acting chairperson and Samajwadi Party’s RS member, Rama Shanker Kaushik.

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Arjun Singh, who could not attend today’s meeting due to health problems, had called the experts to comment on the new NCERT books.

Similarly, for tomorrow’s Parliamentary Committee meeting which has been cancelled, historians Narayani Gupta and Dipankar Gupta had been invited. The 40-member committee has 14 BJP members, including Kriti Azad, Prof. R.B.S. Verma and Satyanarayan Rao. They contended that the Left-leaning historians were ‘‘unilaterally invited’’.