Odisha Textbook Row: CM Accepts Panel Report; Former Director Suspended, 14 Reforms Ordered

Bhubaneswar: A high-level committee constituted under the chairmanship of the Development Commissioner to investigate errors in Odisha school textbooks has submitted its report to Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi.

Accepting the committee’s recommendations in their entirety, the Chief Minister has directed immediate implementation of all proposed measures.

Based on the committee’s findings, former Director of the Directorate of Teacher Education (Teacher Training & SCERT), Manoj Padhi, has been suspended along with three Assistant Directors—Pralipta Mishra, Dilip Kumar Sahu, and Bharati Tudu. Disciplinary proceedings have also been initiated against six other Assistant Directors: Bandita Pattnaik, Manas Ranjan Rout, Manoranjan Mahapatra, Dr. Prashant Kumar Sahu, Manas Kumar Nayak, and Dr. Sudarshan Santara.

To rectify the existing errors and prevent similar lapses in the future, the committee has proposed 14 key recommendations, all of which the government has agreed to implement.

As part of the corrective measures, SCERT will prepare a Master Errata Register within seven days. Corrected content will be communicated to students through replacement pages, reprinted inserts, and printed correction sheets. The revised PDF versions will be designated as the official teaching material, and teachers will undergo immediate orientation programmes on the corrections.

The government will also establish a dedicated Textbook Quality Assurance Cell within SCERT. Subject-wise Curricular Area Groups and book-specific Textbook Development Committees, modelled on the NCERT framework, will be constituted to strengthen the textbook preparation process.

On the accountability front, a responsibility matrix will be prepared for each identified error. Show-cause notices will be issued to the DTP agency, printer, and approving authorities concerned. A system of penalties, performance assessment, and blacklisting of errant printers and DTP vendors will also be introduced.

To enhance transparency, a Public Errata Portal will be launched, while pilot testing will be made mandatory for every new textbook. Henceforth, no textbook will be sent for printing without obtaining final academic, language, fact-image, and production clearances, official sources said.