The Odisha government on Friday suspended four senior officials of the State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT), including its former Director, and initiated disciplinary proceedings against six others after a high-level inquiry held them accountable for glaring errors in school textbooks prescribed for the current academic session.
The action came after a committee headed by the Development Commissioner submitted its report to Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi. Acting on the panel’s recommendations, the Chief Minister approved disciplinary action against the officials concerned and directed the implementation of a comprehensive set of reforms to overhaul the textbook preparation and quality control mechanism.
Former Director of the Directorate of Teacher Education and SCERT, Manoj Padhi, along with Assistant Directors Pralipta Mishra, Dilip Kumar Sahu and Bharati Tudu, has been placed under suspension.
Disciplinary proceedings have also been initiated against six Assistant Directors—Bandita Pattnaik, Manas Ranjan Rout, Manoranjan Mahapatra, Dr Prashant Kumar Sahu, Manas Kumar Nayak and Dr Sudarshan Santara.
The controversy surfaced after several textbooks introduced for the 2025-26 academic session were found to contain factual inaccuracies, grammatical and spelling mistakes, faulty translations, incorrect illustrations and editorial lapses.
The errors, detected across subjects, drew sharp criticism from parents, teachers, educationists and political parties, prompting the state government to constitute the inquiry committee to identify the causes of the lapses and fix responsibility.
Based on the committee’s recommendations, the government has decided to implement 14 corrective measures aimed at strengthening the textbook development process and preventing similar lapses in future.
Among the key reforms are the creation of a master errata register by SCERT, dissemination of corrected information to every student, and the establishment of a dedicated Quality Assurance Cell to oversee the drafting, review, editing and publication of school textbooks.
The government has also made it mandatory that no textbook will be cleared for printing unless it has received all prescribed approvals relating to language, content, factual accuracy, illustrations and overall quality. The revised protocol envisages multiple levels of scrutiny before manuscripts are sent to the printing press, ensuring greater accountability and higher editorial standards.
The disciplinary action, coupled with the institutional reforms, marks the state government’s first major response to the textbook controversy in an attempt to restore credibility to Odisha’s school textbook preparation system.