The court asked the Centre to "constitute such a Committee of domain experts, preferably including a former senior Judge, an eminent academician, and a renowned practitioner in law” for this. (Source: File)The Centre Friday informed the Supreme Court that ex-attorney general K Venugopal and former judges of the top court, Justice Indu Malhotra and Anirudha Bose, will be part of the expert panel, which the court had directed to be set up, to review the chapter on “corruption” in the judiciary in the NCERT textbook for Class 8.Solcitor General Tushar Mehta conveyed this to a three-judge bench presided over by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant, as it took up for hearing a PIL questioning comments on an SC judgment in another National Council of Educational Research and Training textbook.“We have appointed a committee. As a jurist, we requested, and he has accepted, Mr K K Venugopal. He will be a member of the committee in drafting the chapter. Justice Indu Malhotra would be the judge. We have requested Justice Aniruddha Bose, as Judicial Director, to be kind enough to associate,” Mehta said before the bench also comprising Justices Joymalya Bagchi and Vipul M Pancholi.Mehta added that a vice-chancellor would also be there in the committee.Justice Bose is currently the director of the National Judicial Academy, Bhopal.The apex court had taken suo motu cognisance of the matter following a report in The Indian Express on February 24 and ordered a ban on “further publication, reprinting or digital dissemination of the book. NCERT also issued an unconditional apology.Hearing it on March 11, SC also said it was “disturbed” by NCERT’s statement in its affidavit that the chapter “has been duly rewritten” and “the revised chapter shall be incorporated in the forthcoming academic session 2026-2027.”Story continues below this ad“Owing to the perturbing stand taken by the Director, NCERT… regarding “rewriting” of the offending chapter, we direct that if at all, Chapter 4 of the Textbook has been rewritten, the same shall not be published until it is approved by a Committee comprising domain experts,” the apex court said.The court asked the Centre to “constitute such a Committee of domain experts, preferably including a former senior Judge, an eminent academician, and a renowned practitioner in law” for this.On Friday, a PIL said that an older social science textbook of Class 8 had said that “recent judgments tend to view the slum dweller as an encroacher in the city.” The petitioner contended that it would influence the minds of the children studying it.CJI Kant said people are entitled to have their own opinions about a judgment. “It’s only a perception,” he said.Story continues below this adMehta said that “perception that an uninformed person may have from a judgment can never be the concern of the judiciary”.The court refused to entertain the plea and went on to dispose it.