With the Opposition parties alleging deletion of 23 chapters from the Class 12 history book of the Punjab School Education Board (PSEB), the state government has decided to hold back further release of the book until the newly constituted Oversight Committee examines it and decides on the way forward.

An official spokesperson announced the decision here on Tuesday. After Chief Minister Amarinder Singh decided to set up the six-member Oversight Committee headed by eminent historian Prof Kirpal Singh, the spokesperson said, it was felt that it would be better for the panel to undertake a review of the book before its further release.

The PSEB has also been directed to extend all assistance to the committee to complete this task at the earliest. The committee has been mandated to consider and report on the recommendations of the Expert Group constituted by the Punjab School Education Board in 2014 to review the changes made in the new History syllabus prescribed for classes XI and XII, subsequent to the recommendations of the Expert Group, and to suggest corrections, if any.

The committee has been further asked to examine the contents of the textbooks prescribed for classes XI and XII and to suggest corrections for factual and other errors, if any, and to align, as may be practicably possible, the History syllabus with that prescribed by the NCERT.

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Apart from these, the committee has been directed to review the syllabus and contents of textbooks prescribed for History for all classes under the Punjab School Education Board and to ensure that there are no factual discrepancies.

CM Amarinder Singh had on Monday announced the constitution of a six-member oversight committee to examine the recommendations of the 2014 panel that reviewed the history syllabus and oversee all history books in the future.

The move came in the wake of the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) alleging that a major portion of Sikh and Punjab history was removed from the Class 12 history curriculum.

The CM had however lashed out at the Opposition for “unnecessarily politicising the issue” and dismissed as politically motivated the controversy. He said the decision to review the syllabus and print books in alignment with the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) syllabus was taken during the previous Shiromani Akali Dal-Bharatiya Janata Party (SAD-BJP) government in 2014.

Amarinder said there had been no deletion of syllabus relating to the Sikh Gurus, and the entire history of the Gurus, starting from Baba Banda Bahadur, had been incorporated in a chronological order in Class XI and XII syllabi.