The Hindu : National : Enquiry report indicts former NCERT Director

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, May 29, 2005

National

National

Enquiry report indicts former NCERT Director

Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI: A Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry enquiry has found fault with former Director of the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) J. S. Rajput on a number of counts, including "nepotism, irregular appointments, favouritism... and [an] authoritarian style of administration."

Commissioned by the Arjun Singh dispensation at the Ministry last year, the enquiry committee, headed by retired bureaucrat S. Sathyam, held Dr. Rajput guilty in 128 of the 201 complaints received against him. While most of the cases mentioned refer to individual appointments and treatment of NCERT staff, the committee charged him with recklessness on the issue of textbook revision.

According to the report, Mr. Rajput caused "avoidable embarrassment to the Ministry and NCERT" by reprinting old history textbooks of Class X even after being cautioned about errors in them. Besides, the hurried introduction of new textbooks under the National Curriculum Framework for School Education 2000 without checking for and correcting errors resulted in a huge stock of unsaleable books.The committee found that Dr. Rajput — after seeking the then Education Secretary's advice on procedure to be followed for releasing the new curriculum framework — short-circuited the process without taking the necessary sanctionfrom the Executive Committee, the Governing Body, and the Central Advisory Board of Education.

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