A standing committee at IIT Gandhinagar will review Michel Danino’s guest professor role following the Supreme Court’s directions for governments as well as public institutions to dissociate from him and two others involved in drafting a NCERT Class 8 textbook that has been withdrawn over a section on “corruption in the judiciary”.
“There’s a faculty standing committee that will look into the appointment in light of the Supreme Court judgment. The committee will deliberate on the matter, and a decision will be taken,” said IIT Director Prof Rajat Moona.
“Prof Danino was a visiting faculty member till the end of January last year. Then he was appointed guest faculty to come to IIT on a need basis, but he hasn’t come since then. The appointment is still valid, but he has not come. Guest faculty members are paid for the time they come to the institute. This is usually on a need basis; if there is anything, we invite the guest faculty members,” he said.
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court directed the Centre, states, Union Territories, universities, and public institutions to dissociate from three members of the textbook development team who drafted the chapter on the judiciary in the now-withdrawn Class 8 social science textbook.
The court’s direction was issued after NCERT Director D P Saklani named Danino, Suparna Diwakar, and Alok Prasanna Kumar in an affidavit, stating that the chapter was drafted by a team under Danino’s chairmanship.
Danino did not respond to a query sent by The on the matter.
Danino, 69, was the chairperson of the curricular area group that develops social science textbooks. As the chairperson, he has been a key part of the textbook development team for social science books for classes 6 to 8.
A 2017 Padma Shri awardee, Danino was born in France and studied there until he moved to India in 1977. He has had a long association with IIT Gandhinagar, where he began as a guest professor in 2011 and later served as a visiting professor until January 2025. At the institute, he was involved with a course on Indian Knowledge Systems and helped set up an Archaeological Sciences Centre.
A series of lectures he gave at IIT Kanpur in 2010 and 2011, and later in 2014, on topics like the “Indus-Sarasvati civilisation”, early landmarks of science and technology in India, and exploring Indian civilisation, caught attention, even among faculty members at other institutes, including IIT Gandhinagar.
Danino had been a scholar-in-residence at IIT Kanpur.
