Director of the Indian Institute of Madras (IIT) Kamakoti, former Vice-Chancellor of National Law School of India University (NLSIU) Bengaluru R Venkata Rao and Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) Chairman Raghuvindra Tanwar, have become part of the 20-member National Curriculum and Teaching Materials Committee (NSTC), tasked with preparing the national curriculum and teaching materials for teachers under the NSTC. (INSERT).
In the wake of the Supreme Court’s March 11 order on the ‘Corruption in Judiciary’ section in the now-withdrawn Class 8 Social Science textbook, NCERT reconstituted the National Anti-Corruption Commission through a notification dated April 2.
Apart from Kamakoti, Rao and Tanwar, the newly formed 20-member committee also includes Amarendra Prasad Behera, joint in-charge director of Central Institute of Educational Technology (CIET), NCERT, as a new member.
The NSTC was first formed in July 2023 with 19 members and was tasked with developing the new school curriculum and textbooks, in line with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, and the National Curriculum Framework for School Education (NCFSE) 2023. The reconstituted NSTC no longer includes three names that were part of the old committee: Professor Michel Danino, former guest professor at IIT Gandhinagar; Bibek Debroy, former Chairman of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council (EAC), who died on November 1, 2024, and MD Srinivas, Chairman of the Center for Policy Studies in Chennai.
In the reconstituted NSTC, NCERT retained former National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration (NIEPA) Chancellor MC Pant as chair and Manjul Bhargava, professor of mathematics at Princeton University, as co-chair. Fourteen members from the previous committee have also been retained, including Sudha Murty, chairman of Infosys Foundation, singer Shankar Mahadevan, EAC-PM’s Sanjeev Sanyal, former national badminton coach U Vimal Kumar, Chamu Krishna Shastri, chairman of the Bharatiya Bhasha Samiti, and Gajanan Lundhe, who heads the NSTC program office.
While the 21 July 2023 notification of terms of reference (ToR) for the NSTC limited NCERT’s role in implementation – stating that materials “shall be published and distributed by NCERT” – the new ToR adds that they will be “approved, published and distributed by NCERT”, giving it formal approval authority rather than the NSTC, and signaling a shift towards greater centralisation.
The 2023 Notification provides for Curriculum Area Groups (CAGs) for different subjects, which will be constituted by the NSTC Chair and Co-Chair. Danino, who was blacklisted by the Supreme Court, was president of the CAG for social science textbooks. The 2023 Notification mandated the Regional Consultative Groups to develop “textbooks and other teaching and learning materials,” and the latest notification states that Textbook Development Teams (TDTs) will develop “curricula, textbooks and other teaching and learning materials.” The scope is expanded further by including “emerging themes where appropriate”.
The revised Terms of Reference also provide greater oversight by NCERT in the decision-making process. Where the 2023 Framework allowed the NSTC to engage experts independently – “the freedom to invite other experts for advice, consultation and support” – the 2026 version qualifies this by requiring such engagement “in consultation with NCERT”. The shift is also evident in how CAGs are formed: while the 2023 notification said that the NSTC leadership would establish CAGs “with support from NCERT,” the 2026 ToR stipulates that TDTs be formed “in consultation with the Director of NCERT.”
