Tripura Chief Minister Biplab Kumar Deb on Tuesday said school textbooks in the state teach only about former Soviet leaders Joseph Stalin and Vladimir Lenin and announced that a new syllabus laying stress on Indian leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Subhas Chandra Bose and APJ Abdul Kalam will be introduced soon, The Indian Express reported.

Deb made the remarks in an address at Tripura University’s Foundation Day.

“It is very tough to see Indian history in textbooks these days,” the chief minister said. “All that they have are Stalin, Lenin and the Russian Revolution. Our government is working to introduce NCERT syllabus in school textbooks from the next academic year.” The chief minister said the current syllabus for schools and colleges “seemed to have been prescribed by a political party”.

Tripura Education Minister Ratan Lal Nath said in June that the state was lagging in the education sector. He said the government of the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Indigenous People’s Front of Tripura government would introduce the NCERT syllabus from Class 1 to Class 8.

The BJP-led government came to power in Tripura in March 2018, routing the Communist Party of India (Marxist), which lost 33 seats.