Soni orders inquiry to fix responsibility
CHANDIGARH: A day after he gave Punjab School Education Board (PSEB) chairman Manohar Kant Kalohia a tongue-lashing, school education minister OP Soni has ordered an inquiry to fix responsibility for “mistakes” in the Class-12 history textbook in the state.
Soni said he had asked secretary, school education, to conduct probe and give the report within a week. “If anyone is found at fault, we will take appropriate action,” he told HT on Tuesday after a meeting with members of the expert group that prepared the contentious history content. Efforts to contact school education secretary Krishan Kumar did not elicit any response.
The minister had taken Kalohia to task on Monday for errors in five chapters of the new history book that were uploaded by the board, bluntly telling him that the state government was facing flak for their lapses. The Captain Amarinder Singh-led Congress government has been under constant fire from the opposition Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) and the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) over the alleged “derogatory references” to the Sikh gurus and “distortion” of history in these chapters.
Soni said the SAD was deliberately politicising history textbooks because it did not have anything to say against the government. “There should be no controversy as we have already withdrawn the chapters and told the board to continue with last year’s textbooks during the current session,” he said.
The minister also told the expert group to continue their work for preparation of content for the history textbooks. “Once the books are final, the department will be look at the content and take it to the state cabinet for decision,” he said.
After the controversy broke out last month, historian Kirpal Singh, who heads the six-member committee constituted to design the curriculum and prepare content for Classes 11 and 12 history books, had rejected the distortion charge. However, the committee members conceded “some errors” in the content, saying that the government wanted them to finish writing the textbook quickly.