The Supreme Court on Wednesday directed the Centre, states, Union territories and universities to dissociate from three members of the textbook development team who drafted the chapter on judiciary for Class 8 social science textbook, which was withdrawn by the NCERT following a row.
The Court’s direction came after NCERT Director D P Saklani, in an affidavit, said that the chapter “was drafted by the Textbook Development Team under the chairmanship of Prof Michel Danino consisting of… Suparna Diwakar… Alok Prasanna Kumar”.
The NCERT also said that the chapter was to be looked into by the 19-member National Syllabus and Teaching Learning Material Committee (NSTC), but this was “not placed before the NSTC” and circulated “only amongst few members digitally”. The NSTC is an overarching committee constituted by the NCERT in 2023 to look into the making of the school syllabus and textbooks.
Members of the NSTC include Danino; Sanjeev Sanyal, Member of the PM’s Economic Advisory Council; Sudha Murty, founder of Infosys Foundation; singer Shankar Mahadevan; Chamu Krishna Shastri, chairperson of the Bharatiya Bhasha Samiti constituted by the Education Ministry for promotion of Indian languages; and former national badminton coach U Vimal Kumar.
Apart from Danino, the withdrawn social science textbook mentioned four NSTC members as being part of its development team, including Sanyal, and M C Pant, who was then Chancellor, NIEPA (National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration); mathematician Manjul Bhargava; and Gajanan Londhe, who heads the NSTC programme office.
The names of NSTC members amongst whom the chapter was reportedly circulated as per the NCERT affidavit in the Supreme Court did not come up during the hearing.
Earlier, the Supreme Court had taken up a suo motu case in the matter, while slamming the chapter on judiciary as a “calculated move to undermine and demean the dignity of the judiciary”, and imposing a “complete blanket ban” on further publication, reprinting or digital dissemination of the textbook.
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The three members of the NCERT textbook development team who the Supreme Court wants Centre and states to disassociate from, saying it saw no reason for them to be involved in any manner in preparation of curriculum or finalisation of textbooks for the next generation of children:
Michel Danino: A guest professor at IIT Gandhinagar, the 69-year-old is the chairperson of the ‘Curricular Area Group’ for social science, constituted by the NCERT in 2023. In that capacity, he has been part of textbook development teams for social science for Classes 6 to 8. Different Curricular Area Groups handle different subjects.
Danino is also a member of the National Syllabus and Teaching Learning Material Committee, the overarching committee tasked with developing the syllabus and textbooks.
Born in France, Danino moved to India in the 1970s, drawn by an interest in Indian spirituality, Sri Aurobindo and his ideas on Indian civilisation, and Aurobindo’s disciple Mirra Alfassa, better known as the Mother and founder of Auroville in Puducherry.
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Having initially worked on texts related to Aurobindo and the Mother, Danino came to public attention when he gave a series of lectures at IIT Kanpur in 2010 on topics including the ‘Indus-Sarasvati Civilisation’. He also released a book around this time on the mythical Sarasvati river.
By 2011, he was a guest professor at IIT Gandhinagar and helped set up the Archaeological Sciences Centre at the institute. He also coordinated an Indian Knowledge Systems course at the institute, and offered courses such as ‘Perspectives on Indian Civilisation’, with his works rejecting the theory of Aryan invasion.
The new Class 6 social science textbook, released in 2024, refers to the Harappan Civilisation as the ‘Sindhu-Sarasvati’ and ‘Indus-Sarasvati’ civilisation.
Alok Prasanna Kumar: The co-founder of the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, Kumar graduated from NALSAR University of Law in 2008 and is the only person with a legal background in the textbook development team. He told The Indian Express earlier that he took up the NCERT assignment after stepping down from his role at Vidhi.
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As part of the team for social science textbooks, Kumar was not involved in the books for any other classes besides the one for Grade 8, which now stands withdrawn.
Going by the Vidhi Centre’s website, Kumar’s areas of research include judicial reforms, constitutional law, urban development, and law and technology.
In an EPW article in 2022, he had written on the judiciary and the collegium system, noting, “We need a more transparently and efficiently appointed, diverse set of judges.”
He wrote: “…the failings of the collegium system cannot be addressed by reverting to some prior, discredited system of appointment that gives the Union government a predominant say in the process. Likewise, resurrecting the failed model of the National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC) will not work; what is needed at the moment is a greater focus on the ‘how’ of judicial appointments rather than just the ‘who’.”
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In another EPW article in 2025, he wrote about the Delhi High Court order denying bail to Umar Khalid and others. “… in what is possibly an unwanted judicial first, the court insists that a slow and delayed trial while the accused is in jail is actually in the interests of the accused,” the article noted.
In 2021, he wrote in an EPW article about pendency and backlog in the Supreme Court in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Suparna Diwakar: She is listed as part of the textbook development team that worked on social science books for Classes 6 to 8. In the withdrawn Class 8 social science book, Diwakar is mentioned among the contributors as an educator, development sector professional, and chief consultant in the programme office of the NSTC.
Her web profiles talk of Diwakar having decades of experience in the development sector, as well as having worked on education-related projects in Karnataka. She is also said to be interested in Indic Knowledge Systems.
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Diwakar has worked in the past with Adamya Chetana – a non-governmental organisation initiated by senior BJP leader Ananth Kumar, who passed away in 2018.
