No malafide intent behind NCERT cartoons,says panel

The one-man committee of former education secretary B S Baswan,which submitted its report to the HRD Ministry,has said due process and procedure was followed in the vetting of content.

A committee set up by the government to fix responsibility for allowing objectionable cartoons in NCERT textbooks has concluded that there was no malafide intention or gross negligence involved.

The one-man committee of former education secretary B S Baswan,which submitted its report to the HRD Ministry,has said due process and procedure was followed in the vetting of content.

The report noted that NCERT textbooks are a result of a collective exercise involving several rounds of vetting by the textbook development committee,the focus groups and the monitoring committee. It added that it is difficult to fix

individual responsibility for any alleged lapse.

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The Baswan committee was set up by the HRD Ministry following an uproar in Parliament in May over certain offensive cartoons in NCERT textbooks. HRD Minister Kapil Sibal had then announced the constitution of two committees one to review the textbooks for inappropriate content and cartoons and another to probe which NCERT officials were responsible for the lapses.

The Baswan committee report along with the NCERT textbook development committee report submitted earlier this month which recommended removal of no more than three-four cartoons mark a big shift from the position of the Thorat committee. The six-member panel headed by ICSSR chairman S K Thorat recommended removal of over 20 cartoons and many caption changes.

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