Akali Dal leader Parkash Singh Badal today trashed Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh's claim that chapters on Sikh history were dropped when the state's school syllabus was aligned with NCERT courses during the Akali Dal-BJP government's term.
"The CM is lying in his claim that the decision to delete Sikh history from the books meant for Class 12 of the Punjab School Education Board was taken during the Akali-BJP regime," the former chief minister said in a statement.
"All the chapters on Punjab and Sikh history which they have deleted now continued to be taught to class 12 students through the SAD-BJP regime, including the period from 2013 to 2017, Badal said.
"If the decision to exclude all these chapters on Punjab and Sikh history was taken during the SAD-BJP regime in 2013, then how come it was still being taught up to 2017," Badal asked.
Badal asked the chief minister to compare the old books with the new ones. "The sad fact is that they have removed Sikh history and replaced it with the history of the Congress party," he said.
Amarinder Singh had said yesterday that it was during the SAD-Bharatiya Janata Party rule when the decision to realign the courses with the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) syllabus was taken.
He had warned the Akalis against "playing politics" on an issue involving religious sentiments.
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But Badal said it was ridiculous that Amarinder Singh had changed his stance within 24 hours.
He first said that no chapters had been deleted from class 12 and that these had only been shifted from class 12 to Class 11, the Akali leader said.
"Now, he is falsely claiming that the decision on the new syllabus was taken during the Akali regime. The officers are putting the CM in an awkward situation. Instead of defending his officers, he should have stood by Sikh history and ordered an independent inquiry into the whole incident," Badal said.
He said the chief minister should have accepted the Akali challenge and produced both the old and the new books for comparison before the media.
He asked Amarinder Singh to read the acknowledgements page in the new book which gives credit for the changes to the new team of 2018.
"This will show him who brought about the changes. The acknowledgement page admits that the changes have been made only now and the new team is claiming credit for it. I think they did not show this page to the CM," Badal said.
Referring to the chief minister's claim that the chapters on Sikh history had been shifted to class 11, Badal said this was a "misleading" statement as class 11 books already contained such chapters. There were additional 23 chapters in class 12, he said.
All these 23 chapters have been dropped from both class 11 and class 12 books, Badal said.
"As a historian himself, Amarinder Singh would have known that history is taught at different levels in different classes, he said.
"Now they have just limited it to introductory passages in class 11 which were already there, and they have removed the detailed chapters from class 12," said the former CM.