New Delhi: Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan has addressed the fact that Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and the periodic table were deleted from text books for Class 10 students, published by the National Council of Educational Research and Training.

Reports had noted earlier this year that the NCERT which supplies textbooks to most students studying in government schools across India, has dropped Darwin's theory of evolution and the periodic table from Class 10 textbooks as part of the 'rationalisation' exercise taken up to reduce the syllabus during COVID-19.

The move had sparked fears on pseudo-science taking over school education.

More than 4000 researchers and scientists had signed an open letter in April, urging officials to restore these elements.

“The country’s scientific community is seriously dismayed to see that the theory of biological evolution … has been dropped,” the Breakthrough Science Society had said in a statement quoted by Science.

Speaking at a Pune event on June 21, education minister Pradhan claimed, according to PTI, that "nothing of this sort has happened."

He claimed that once this "controversy" broke out, Pradhan spoke to NCERT officials and sought details.

"According to them, experts had advised that during COVID-19, some repetitive parts could be reduced and later brought back. So the content in Classes 8 and 9 is unchanged. In the book of Class 10, some portion related to the theory of evolution was omitted last year, and it is unchanged in Classes 11 and 12," he said.

Noting that students are going to be taught the periodic table in classes 9, 11 and 12, Pradhan admitted that students who do not take up science after Class 10 will not be taught Darwin's theory.

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