New Delhi, June 3: The human resource development ministry has started a probe into alleged financial and academic irregularities by Parvin Sinclair, the former NCERT director who resigned last year.

The ministry has asked Shashi Prakash Goyal, a joint secretary in the department, to investigate the allegations.

Goyal has asked for documents from the National Council of Educational Research and Training on the purchase of paper worth about Rs 50 crore for printing textbooks.

It was alleged that the NCERT, with approval from the director, had purchased the papers circumventing rules.

Goyal has also asked for documents related to the Rs 34 lakh allegedly spent on renovating the director's bungalow on the campus and then not shifting to it. She had continued to stay in her previous accommodation given by the Indira Gandhi National Open University, where she is a permanent employee.

Sinclair, who was appointed by the UPA government, had resigned from the post of NCERT director for "personal reasons". Her resignation, in October last year, came after RSS ideologue Dinanath Batra complained to HRD minister Smriti Irani that the NCERT had hurriedly started the process of revising the National Curriculum Framework (NCF) - the document that guides preparation of syllabi - "without approval of the government".

Batra contended that the council should have waited for directions from the new government, which assumed power in May last year.

The NCERT, which had started preparing position papers on the NCF for 21 subjects, had to put on hold the process. The curricula and textbooks were prepared in 2006-07, when the UPA government was in power.

Batra has been demanding fresh curricula prepared by experts appointed by the NDA government. He has complained that the existing textbooks have hardly any material on value education, the epics, the Puranas and Indian historical personalities like mathematician Aryabhata, health scientist Sushruta, the philosopherKanada and Maharana Pratap, the Rajput warrior.

Goyal has asked for documents related to the review of the NCF.

Sinclair refused to comment. "All the documents are there," she said. "Let them see. I have nothing to comment."