Bhopal, Jun 29 (IANS): The ruling BJP in Madhya Pradesh has decided to include Vinyak Damodar Savarkar's biography as a compulsory subject for students of the state board.

State Education Minister Inder Singh Parmar said the government has decided to include biographies of true heroes and the new syllabus will include Veer Savarkar, Bhagavad Gita Sandesh, Lord Parshuram, Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev, Rajguru, and others.

The minister said Savarkar is one of those revolutionaries who have been imprisoned twice in one life.

He further said that Veer Savarkar was the first writer who called the movement of 1857 as freedom struggle, otherwise, people used to call it Ghadar.

"Veer Savarkar has an irreplaceable contribution to India's independence and he should be honored in society. But unfortunately, the great revolutionaries of India were not given a place in the pages of history," Parmar added.

Meanwhile, the criticised the Congress claim the true revolutionaries were not given enough space in school syllabus in the past several decades. "In 2019, a book, based on biography of Veer Savarkar was distributed in some schools, but the Kamal Nath led Congress government had suspended the school principals," he claimed.

The BJP government's this decision is likely to spark political controversy in poll-bound Madhya Pradesh as the Congress has objected the proposal. Congress MLA Arif Masood talking to the press on Thursday said, he would oppose the government's decision.

"It is unfortunate that they want to include Savarkar. He apologized to the British and including him in the syllabus is an insult to freedom fighters," Masood said.