CBSE apologizes for question asked in class 12th exam regarding Gujarat riots

The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) asked question in its 12th class Sociology first term exam “Under which the anti-muslim riots in Gujarat in 2002 took place?”

To answer this question, CBSE had given four options; it included ‘Congress’, ‘BJP’, ‘Democratic’ and ‘Republican’. Later, the question was termed “inappropriate” by the board. The CBSE exam was held on Wednesday.

Afterwards, the board apologize the mistake and said that the question was asked in an inappropriate manner. The Board also assured to take strict action against the paper setters.

Giving clarification, CBSE put a post on Twitter and said, “A question has been asked in today’s class 12 Sociology Term 1 exam which is inappropriate and in violation of the CBSE guidelines for external subject experts for setting question papers. CBSE acknowledges the error made and will take strict action against the responsible persons.”

“The CBSE guidelines for paper setters clearly state they have to ensure the questions should be academic oriented only and should be class, religion neutral and should not touch upon domains that could harm sentiments of people based on social and political choices” in another tweet CBSE said.

This question was asked from the chapter ‘Challenges of Cultural Diversity’ of NCERT class 12 Sociology book, page number 134.  “No area remained untouched by communal violence. All communities have faced more or less such violence at one time or another. The minority community has been affected the most. In this case the ruling political party cannot be left out completely.

It is further said in the same chapter that the two biggest riots happened during the rule of the biggest parties. First Sikh riots 1984 and second Gujarat riots of 2002.