Book with controversial Ambedkar cartoon still available on NCERT website

Following the controversy over a 63-year-old BR Ambedkar cartoon by K Shankar Pillai the government assured Parliament that no political cartoons would be allowed in school textbooks. Finance Minister Pranab Mukerjee also announced that all the objectionable material would be withdrawn.

But the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) book at the centre of the storm - India Constitution at Work, a part of the Class XI Political Science curriculum is still available on the council's website.

NCERT on its part merely removed the controversial book from its textbook listing, but the entire content of the book still resides on the ncert.nic.in servers and the URL for that can be easily guessed by tech-savvy users.

The book (at the time of filing this report) was available here.

NCERT seems to have also removed other books with cartoons from its list of online textbooks and it includes Democratic Politics, a Social Science book for Class X students. This book can also be easily accessed on ncert.nic.in website.

Posted in: Technology