100 books banned in Punjab for profane, anti-Pakistan content

LAHORE : Punjab Curriculum & Textbook Board (PCTB) Managing Director Rai Manzoor Hussain Nasir on Thursday banned 100 books being taught in private schools for carrying blasphemous and anti-Pakistan content.

Addressing a press conference, Rai Manzoor Hussain Nasir said that the PCTB had started critical review of 10,000 books being taught by private schools across the province and in the first phase had banned 100 books of 31 publishers including Oxford and Cambridge for blasphemous, immoral and anti-Pakistan content.

The PCTB MD said that the board had formed 30 committees for this purpose. He said it was sad that nobody checked these books earlier and had no idea what was being taught to our kids in private schools against hefty fees. He said the banned books had distorted facts about Pakistan and its creation, Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Allama Muhammad Iqbal while these books also carried blasphemous content. He said Pakistan was portrayed as an inferior country to India while Azad Jammu & Kashmir (AJK) was also shown as part of India in maps in some of these books.

Rai Manzoor Nasir said that instead of including sayings of Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Allama Muhammad Iqbal, etc. one of the books carried sayings of Mahatma Gandhi and some unknown people. He said in a book of Mathematics counting concepts were made explained to the young students showing pictures of pigs. He said one of the books by Cambridge tried to promote crime and violence among the students on the basis of unemployment in the country.

The PCTB MD said that these 100 books had been immediately banned and the publishers had been directed to immediately stop publishing and selling the books. He said District Education Authorities (DEAs) across Punjab will visit private schools (after reopening of schools) to check if these books were still being taught. He said FIRs would be registered against the publishers for violation under the provisions of the Punjab Curriculum and Textbook Board Act 2015.

science moot: University of Education's first two-day online international conference on “Advances in Material Sciences” started on Thursday. The conference is being attended by the renowned scientists from nine countries, including USA, China, Australia, Malaysia, Germany, South Korea and Pakistan. Inaugurating the conference, the UOE Vice-Chancellor Prof Dr Talat Naseer Pasha said this conference would provide knowledge based on latest research in the relevant field. More than 30 papers will be read out during the conference.