New Delhi: The National Council of Education and Research (NCERT) has assembled a new textbook development team for class 11 and 12 political science text books with at least four members linked to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) or affiliated organisations, news agency PTI has reported.The panel includes former office bearers of BJP’s student wing Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), members of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh-linked organisations and a political consultant for the BJP.The new team has been tasked with developing a new textbook for class 11 by November this year and while the deadline for the class 12 textbook is July 2027.According to the NCERT’s notification, the panel has a mandate to integrate cultural rootedness and Indian knowledge systems in the curriculum. Who’s on the panelThe team will be led by academic and political analyst Sandeep Shastri, vice president of Karnataka-based deemed university Nitte. The panel members include Yadunath Deshpande and Vandana Mishra, associated with the ABVP, as well as Prashant Divekar and Ravi Rameshchandra Shukla, both associated with RSS-linked organisations.Deshpande is currently a senior consultant with the Ministry of Education. He has served as ABVP’s joint state organising secretary for Maharashtra and an organising secretary in the ABVP’s Mumbai-Konkan structure. He has also served as a political consultant for the BJP. Mishra is a professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University’s Centre for Political Studies and a former national secretary of the ABVP. Divekar is associated with Pune-based Jnana Prabodhini, an RSS-affiliated institution founded in 1962 by RSS’s Vinayak Vishwanath. In his profile on the National Council for Teacher Education’s National Mission for Mentoring portal, Divekar describes his approach as being “rooted in Bhartiya educational philosophy’ and says he has contributed to the National Curriculum Framework”, PTI reported.Shukla is an Associate Professor at JNU’s Centre for Comparative Politics and Political Theory. He is associated with RSS-linked Indian Institute of Democratic Leadership-Rambhau Mhalgi Prabodhini. Shukla is a member of the editorial board of the Indian Journal of Democratic Governance published by the organisation.Other members in the panel include Prakash Kandpal from JNU, Needhi Gupta from National Law University, Chetan Singhai from Chanakya University, Sukanshika Vatsa from Delhi University, Satish Kumar from IGNOU, Deevanshu Shrivastava from National University of Study and Research in Law, Pranav Gupta from Jindal Global Law School, Nanda Kishor from Pondicherry University and Swapna Prabhu from Utkal University, NCERT’s Savita Sagar, M.N. Suresh Kumar from Bengaluru-based Government First Grade College, Diana Isabel from Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation School, N. Bharani from SHVNM Government PU College for Girls. Vanthangpui Khobung and Subhash Singh of NCERT will be member coordinator and co-coordinator, respectively. According to an NCERT notification, the team will seek guidance from the curricular area group on social science, languages, Indian knowledge systems, environmental education, innovative pedagogy and teaching-learning material, the report said.“Review of each of the textbooks will take place to oversee the integration of cross-cutting themes, such as cultural rootedness, Indian knowledge systems, inclusion, educational technology, assessment, etc,” the notification issued by NCERT Director Dinesh Prasad Saklani said.The move comes days after RSS strongman Prahlad Joshi assumed the post of Union education minister after his predecessor, Dharmendra Pradhan, was forced to resign amid a spate of paper-leak controversies and a large scale youth movement following the suicide of at least 21 NEET aspirants.