Chief Minister of Kerala Pinarayi Vijayan on Wednesday, August 23 announced the release of additional textbooks by SCERT (State Council for Educational Research and Training) including topics that were recently omitted from the NCERT (National Council of Educational Research and Training) by the central government, according to ANI.

CM Vijayan released the textbooks of history, political science, economics and sociology by distributing them to students at a government school in Thiruvananthpuram. CM Vijayan said, “For the 2023-24 academic year, in the textbooks that NCERT prepared, some important changes were made in the name of rationalisation. Some portions were taken out completely. Our government looks at this very seriously because the lessons that were deleted were those that should not have been removed.”

The Pinarayi led government has included the portions that were removed from NCERT textbooks.

He targeted NCERT and said that it is making unilateral interventions at the national level in the name of educational reforms. In classes 11 and 12, students receive 44 textbooks for 12 subjects from NCERT that have vested interests involved, Vijayan alleged.

“Such lessons will change the social and historical perspectives of students. The danger is that a generation will grow up lacking human values. It will endanger our society which is rooted in brotherhood and thinks with a secular mind,” Vijayan said.

Mughal history, industrial revolution, partition of India, assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, five-year economic plans and American capitalism are some of the topics that were allegedly omitted by the NCERT and now have been retained by the Kerala government through introduction of SCERT textbooks.