File photo of primary school students walking to their school in Odisha.
| Photo Credit: BISWARANJAN ROUT
The Odisha government on Friday (June 26, 2026) placed four senior officers including former director of State Council of Education, Research and Training (SCERT) Manoj Padhi under suspension and took disciplinary action against six persons holding them responsible for over 2,000 mistakes in textbooks being taught in Classes 1 to 8.
The action was taken following the submission of an inquiry report by a committee constituted under the chairmanship of the Development Commissioner to examine errors in school textbooks. While teachers pointed out errors totalling over 2,100 in textbooks printed for the 2026-27 academic year, the government acknowledged 1,678 mistakes.
Odisha Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi issued directions for the suspension of then director of SCERT Manoj Padhi along with three assistant directors — Pralipta Mishra, Dilip Kumar Sahu, and Bharati Tudu.
Moreover, disciplinary actions have been initiated against six assistant directors — Bandita Pattnaik, Manas Ranjan Rout, Manoranjan Mohapatra, Prashant Kumar Sahu, Manas Kumar Nayak, and Sudarshan Santara.
“The SCERT will prepare a Master Errata Register and provide corrected information to all students, and establish a Quality Assurance Cell,” the Chief Minister’s Office said.
Recommendations for improvement
In order to improve students’ education and correct errors, the committee had put forth 14 recommendations.
“The government will provide replacement pages or reprinted inserts for serious errors. After rectifying mistakes online, the corrected PDF will be declared as the official teaching version. Conduct of immediate correction orientation for teachers has been recommended,” said the CMO in a statement.
While calling for preparing a responsibility matrix for every error, the high-powered committee recommended issue of show-cause notices and appropriate action against the DTP agency, printer, and approving authority.
Textbook quality assurance cell
Moreover, it has been suggested to constitute a textbook quality assurance cell in SCERT. “Creation of subject-wise Curricular Area Groups and book-wise Textbook Development Committees on the NCERT pattern have been recommended,” the committee pointed out.
“Introduction of a foolproof system and final locked PDF mechanism and provision of penalty, performance scoring, and blacklisting of printers/DTP vendors have also been recommended,” the committee said, adding that in future, “no textbook should go for printing without final academic, language, fact-image, factual accuracy and production quality checks”.
Published – June 26, 2026 05:46 pm IST
