HRD Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank on Thursday hit back at critics who alleged a conspiracy in reducing the syllabus of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The CBSE has reduced the syllabus up to 30 per cent for nearly 190 subjects from Classes 9 to 12 only for board exams of the 2020-21 session. The board has said no question will be asked from the reduced syllabus in the exams.

"There has been a lot of uninformed commentary on the exclusion of some topics from #CBSESyllabus. The problem with these comments is that they resort to sensationalism by connecting topics selectively to portray a false narrative," the Nishank shared on twitter.

Key chapters like Democratic Rights, Food Security in India, Federalism, Citizenship and Secularism have been dropped from school courses. The national education board has said it seeks to reduce burden on students amid the pandemic.

The move led to criticism that the centre was tweaking the syllabus to suit a certain narrative. West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee was among those who criticised the CBSE's move to remove those chapters.

The CBSE clarified that "each of the topics that have been wrongly mentioned in media as deleted have been covered under Alternative Academic Calendar of NCERT, which is already in force for all affiliated schools of the board".

Following up on the CBSE's clarification, the HRD Minister  said schools have been asked to follow the Alternate Academic Calendar of the National Council of Educational Research and Training or NCERT.