The NCERT consulted 25 external experts and 16 CBSE teachers to carry out its syllabus rationalisation exercise as part of which portions on the Mughals, Mahatma Gandhi, his assassin Nathuram Godse, reference to Hindu extremists and the 2002 Gujarat riots were dropped from school textbooks, according to the education ministry.

Dropping several topics and portions from the NCERT textbooks has triggered a controversy with the Opposition blaming the Centre of "whitewashing with vengeance". At the heart of the row is the fact that while the changes made as part of the rationalisation exercise were notified, some of these controversial deletions weren`t mentioned in them. This has led to allegations about a bid to delete these portions surreptitiously.