IIT Madras director, ICHR chairman in NCERT syllabus panel

INdian bring of Madras (IIT) Madras theater director V Kamakoti, former vice-chancellor of the subject jurisprudence schooltime of India University (NLSIU) Bengaluru R Venkata Rao and Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) chairman Raghuvendra Tanwar are now part of the 20-member National Syllabus and Teaching Learning Material Committee (NSTC), tasked with preparing the national syllabus and teacher learning material under the National Council of Education Research and Training (NCERT).Following the Supreme Court’s March 11 order in the matter of a section on “corruption in the judiciary” in the now-withdrawn Class 8 social science textbook, the NCERT reconstituted the NSTC through a notification on April 2.Apart from Kamakoti, Rao and Tanwar, the newly constituted 20-member committee also includes Amarendra Prasad Behera, joint director-in-charge, Central Institute of Educational Technology (CIET), NCERT, as a new member.NSTC was first constituted in July 2023 with 19 members and tasked with developing the school syllabus and new 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: Prof 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 Centre for Policy Studies, Chennai.In the reconstituted NSTC, NCERT has retained former National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration (NIEPA) chancellor M C Pant as chairperson and Manjul Bhargava, a mathematics professor at Princeton University, as co-chairperson. Fourteen members from the previous panel have also been retained, including Sudha Murty, chairperson of Infosys Foundation, singer Shankar Mahadevan, Sanjeev Sanyal of the EAC-PM, former national badminton coach U. Vimal Kumar, Chamu Krishna Shastry, chairman of the Bharatiya Bhasha Samiti, and Gajanan Londhe, who heads the NSTC’s programme office.While the July 21, 2023 notification on Terms of Reference (ToR) for NSTC limited NCERT’s role to execution—stating materials “shall be published and distributed by the NCERT”—the new ToR adds that these will be “approved, published and distributed by the NCERT,” giving it formal approval authority instead of NSTC, and signaling a shift towards greater centralisation.The 2023 notification provided for curricular area groups (CAGs) for various subjects, which would be constituted by the NSTC chairperson and co-chairperson. Danino, who has been blacklisted by the Supreme Court, was head of CAG for social science textbooks. The 2023 notification mandated CAGs to develop “textbooks and other teaching learning materials”, the latest notification states that Textbook Development Teams (TDTs) will develop “syllabi, textbooks and other teaching and learning materials.” The scope is widened further with the inclusion of “emerging subjects as and when required.”The revised ToR also introduces greater oversight by NCERT in decision-making. Where the 2023 framework allowed NSTC to independently engage experts—“free 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 visible in how content-development groups are constituted: while the 2023 notification said the NSTC leadership would set up CAGs “with the support of NCERT,” the 2026 ToR mandates that TDTs be formed “in consultation with the Director, NCERT.”