New Delhi: After a weeklong campaign by anti-tobacco activists, the Goa government on Thursday said it would withdraw a social sciences textbook which has a photograph of a late French general smoking a cigarette.

The National Organization for Tobacco Eradication (NOTE), a Goa-based non-profit organisation, had written to the National Council for Education Research and Technology (NCERT), the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Goa government last week, demanding withdrawal of the controversial photograph from the class 10 textbook.

On page 44 of the book, as part of a chapter on "The Communist Movement and Vietnamese Nationalism", is printed the photograph of late French general Henry Navare is shown smoking a cigarette.

"We were informed by the Goa education department that the book is going to be withdrawn from the market and the controversial photo will be removed from it," NOTE general secretary Shekhar Salkar told IANS.

The anti-tobacco activists have complained that the picture of a military man smoking a cigarette projects a macho image and can influence millions of students negatively. IANS