Overview
- A three‑member inquiry ordered by Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi on June 26 found widespread lapses and led to the suspension of four senior officials, including former SCERT director Manoj Padhi.
- Teachers, parents and activists have identified roughly 1,600–1,768 mistakes across classes 1–8, including factual errors such as calling Isaac Newton a 'pilot', wrong photo captions that mislabel monuments and assemblies, and misplaced cultural content.
- The state government has refused a full recall because lakhs of copies are already distributed and has instead issued corrigenda, asked teachers to correct content in class, and announced distribution of revised books and correction sheets to every government school.
- Opposition parties and citizen groups are demanding the education minister’s resignation and a CBI probe, staging protests and submitting memoranda while political leaders warn the errors have eroded trust in textbooks.
- The episode raises questions about quality control in the SCERT approval and NEP‑linked curriculum rollout and could affect around 40 lakh students who received the new books, prompting calls for changes to editorial and printing oversight.