SC Dismisses Plea Against NCERT Textbook Excerpt, Says Courts Should Not be Oversensitive to Criticism

The Supreme Court dismissed a petition seeking to remove an excerpt from an old NCERT Class 8 textbook that claimed recent court verdicts viewed slum dwellers as "encroachers."

The Bench observed that expressing a viewpoint or offering "healthy criticism" of a judgment is a right and the judiciary should not be oversensitive to it.

The Court noted that the textbook discussed the judicial structure holistically. An expert committee is already reviewing controversial content regarding judicial corruption.

Ultimately, the petition was disposed of as infructuous since the impugned textbook was from the 2015-16 academic year.

[Pankaj Pushkar v. UOI & Anr.]