Overview
- State reviews earlier found more than 1,600 language, factual and printing errors across 55 SCERT textbooks for Classes I–VIII, prompting Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi to direct a CID criminal investigation.
- Teachers and parents have flagged fresh mistakes in a Class I Odia book that introduce the alphabet out of sequence by starting with the consonant 'ଚ' instead of the vowel 'ଅ' and that alter lines and spellings in the state song and national anthem.
- Many schools received a 168-page PDF version instead of printed copies, which parents were forced to print and which critics say contains multiple uncorrected errors.
- The School and Mass Education Department says expert-led corrections are under way and has called some media reports exaggerated while the CID probe continues and a former SCERT director was arrested earlier in the case and later granted bail.
- Teachers, parents and educationists are demanding swift accountability and replacement of the circulated PDF with error-free printed textbooks for government and private schools that use state-supplied Odia materials.