Hours after the Supreme Court of India registered a suo motu case on Wednesday (February 25, 2026) over the inclusion of a section on “corruption” in the judiciary in the NCERT’s newest Social Science textbook for Class 8, the National Council for Educational Research and Training issued a statement apologising for the “inappropriate textual material” and “error in judgement” that had “inadvertently crept” into the chapter in question.
Officials said directions had been issued on February 24 (Tuesday) to keep the distribution of this book on “strict hold until further orders”. On Wednesday morning, the Supreme Court registered the suo motu case, calling the section “a selective reference”, even as the NCERT apologised in its statement later that night saying “it regrets this error of judgement”.
A three-judge Bench of Chief Justice of India Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and Vipul M. Pancholi is scheduled to hear the case titled ‘In Re: Social Science Textbook for Grade-8 (Part 2) published by NCERT and ancillary issues’ at 10.30 a.m. on February 26.
The chapter ‘The Role of the Judiciary in Our Society’ in the Class 8 Social Science book prescribed by NCERT mentions that corruption, a massive backlog of cases, and a lack of adequate number of judges were among the “challenges” faced by the judicial system. The section on “corruption in the judiciary” in the book states that judges were bound by a code of conduct that governed not only their behaviour in court but also how they conducted themselves outside of it.
