A day after Punjab Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh asserted that no chapters about the Sikh Gurus have been deleted from Class XII history book of Punjab School Education Board while also lambasting SAD leaders for trying to spread misinformation on a sensitive religious issue, the SAD and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Sunday refused to accept the same.

While the SAD president Sukhbir Badal threw a challenge to Chief Minister on the issue, AAP legislators have demanded an inquiry while describing it as the move to isolate Punjab’s youth from glorious past of Sikhism and Punjab.

Sukhbir went on to challenge Capt Amarinder to produce before the media copies of PSEB’s new book on history for Class IX itself to prove his claim that chapters on Sikh history had not been deleted from the syllabus of Class XII and had merely been shifted to the syllabus of Class IX.

“I dare the CM to share with everyone the new book containing all the old chapters on Sikh history today itself before his officers tried to deceive the people by getting a new book printed now to hide their mischief in deleting Sikh history from the syllabus,” he said.

Referring to Capt Amarinder’s rejoinder to the SAD’s allegations about deletion of chapters on Sikh history from the Class XII syllabus for PSEB students, Sukhbir described Capt Amarinder’s denial as “totally erroneous and misleading”.

“Chief Minister should have ordered an inquiry into the issue instead of embarrassing himself with a factually incorrect statement which was fed to him by the very officers who were responsible for the mischief in the first place,” he said.

AAP DEMANDS PROBE

Criticising Capt Amarinder Singh-led Congress government for deleting 23 chapters related to Sikh Gurus and important event of Sikh history from PSEB’s Class XII history book, AAP on Sunday termed the move as disrespect to the Sikh Gurus while asking the government to correct its “heinous” mistake without any delay.

“PSEB’s move to remove the chapters related to the history of Sikh gurus and their teachings, Anglo-Sikh wars, Baba Banda Singh Bahadur, the rule of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, Sikh struggle against Mughals and Ahmad Shah Abdali and the origin and growth of Sikh Misls etc is an unsaid and this will isolate the youth of Punjab from glorious past of Sikhism in particular and Punjab in whole,” said AAP MlAs Kultar Singh Sandhwan, Sarabjit Kaur Manuke, Pirmal Singh Khalsa, Jagdev Singh Kamalu, Jai Kishan Singh Rodi, Kulwant Singh Pandori and Amarjit Singh Sandoa, in a joint statement.

 “We demand a high-level probe and action against officials guilty of deleting chapters related to Sikh Gurus and glorious past of Sikhism. The government must mark a time-bound inquiry in this regard,” they demanded.

 CM’s ClARIFICATION

Maintaining that “not a single chapter, nor a word, had been deleted by the Board”, the Chief Minister Capt Amarinder, in a clarification issued on Saturday had said that the courses had merely been realigned with the NCERT syllabus to enable the students from Punjab to compete at the national level.

“The history chapters have been now spread across Classes XI and XII, on the recommendation of an Expert Committee, of which a SGPC representative was also a member…Since the Committee had felt that the students should be exposed to Sikh history from Class XI itself, the chapters on Punjab and Sikh history had been shifted to Class XI, while India and Modern History as well as Modern Sikh History had been moved to the Class XII syllabus,” the Chief Minister had said.

He went on to add that under his directives, the PSEB had incorporated chapters on the lives of the four Sahibzadas in the school textbooks.