School books with communal content introduced during the previous BJP rule in Rajasthan will be revised and controversial chapters removed from them.

The move has been recommended to the Board of Secondary Education by the Garg committee appointed by the ruling Congress government early this year, a board official said.

Chief minister Ashok Gehlot has directed the authorities concerned to remove the controversial portions from the books as suggested by the Garg committee, state education minister Master Bhanwar Lal said.

Headed by Rajasthan University professor Subhash Garg, the committee has recently submitted a report to the Board of Secondary Education in Ajmer underlining the "objectionable content in several chapters in books being taught in ninth, tenth, 11th and 12th classes in the state", the board secretary MR Sharma told PTI.

"There are at least 280 books being taught in board's curriculum and the objectionable contents are mostly in Sanskrit, Social Science, History books which are being taught in all government-run schools", Sharma said, adding it would require sufficient time to make corrections, delete chapters and replace them with new ones.

The People's Union for Civil Liberty (PUCL) in Rajasthan claimed that it was the first to draw the attention of Gehlot government to alleged reflection of saffron and RSS ideology in books introduced during Vasundhara Raje government.

Alleging that these books could be "damaging" to young minds a PUCL spokesman said some of them have created controversy over Hindu and Muslim marriages and pre-independence political scenario.

The books were published by the Board of Secondary Education during the previous BJP rule.