Supreme Court closes suo motu case over NCERT chapter on "corruption in judiciary"

The Supreme Court on Tuesday closed its suo motu case over a controversial part in a now-recalled class 8 Social Science textbook released by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) which mentioned “corruption in the judiciary.”

A Bench of Chief Justice of India (CJI) Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana heard the matter briefly today and clarified certain parts of an earlier order passed in the case, before formally closing the matter.

The controversy erupted in February this year after a newspaper reported about the textbook, titled Exploring Society: India and Beyond (Class 8, Vol. 2), particularly the section on “corruption in the judiciary” published as part of a chapter on “The role of the judiciary in our society."

According to reports, the chapter listed “corruption at various levels of the judiciary” and “massive backlog of cases on account of multiple reasons, such as a lack of an adequate number of judges, complicated legal procedures, and poor infrastructure” among the “challenges” faced by the judicial system.

The Court took suo motu cognisance of the matter, observing that the contents of the chapter demeaned the dignity of the judiciary. The NCERT attributed the controversial portion of the textbook to an inadvertent error of judgment, and said it would be withdrawn.

When the matter was heard on February 26, the apex court imposed a blanket ban on the production and distribution of the book. The book was withdrawn from the market and the NCERT issued an apology as well.

The focus then turned to three academicians who drafted the chapter in focus, namely Professor Michel Danino, Suparna Diwakar and Alok Prasanna Kumar.

The Court strongly criticised them and directed the Central government, States, universities and educational institutions to disassociate themselves from the three experts.

This March 11 directive was later challenged by the affected experts who pointed out that they were blacklisted by the Court even before they could defend themselves.

The Court eventually recalled the blacklisting directive.

The Court also recalled an observation that three experts had deliberately misrepresented facts in the controversial chapter. The said order was passed on May 22.

Today, their counsel, Senior Advocate Arvind Datar urged the Court to make a further clarification in its May 22 order.

In particular, Datar referred to a submission made by Solicitor General Tushar Mehta that the curriculum prepared by the three academicians could not be termed the NCERT's collective decision since it was not brought before all necessary committees. The Court had recorded this submission in the May 22 order without adding the academicians' rebuttal, said Datar.

"I have said that this is not correct, because procedurally every textbook has to go through two committees. There are 44 members and there are eight members. There is a procedure. We can show that we have sent it to the committee. It is a statement of responsibility. It's an order of the Supreme Court. Tomorrow they will show it (the May 22 order as is) and say I was negligent. I can request the Court to record that the parties state that they had sent it to the committees. That's our statement," Datar said.

SG Mehta clarified that he had not accused the academicians of not placing the curriculum before the committees per se.

"We never said that they had not placed it. I said factually that curriculum was not placed before the committee and therefore it was not a collective decision," he said.

The Court then proceeded to expressly clarify that its earlier observations referred to by Datar were only submissions made on behalf of the NCERT.

"It is clarified that these were only statements reported and not the observations or order passed by the Court. These are not observations or an order of the Court. With these observations, the main case and the proceedings are also disposed of," the Court said.

[Read Live Coverage]