Odisha Chief Minister Mohan Sharan Majhi on Friday suspended four senior officials of the State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT) and initiated disciplinary proceedings against six other employees in connection with errors found in textbooks prescribed for classes 1 to 8 for the 2026-27 academic session.
The state government suspended former SCERT director Manoj Padhi and assistant directors Pradipta Mishra, Dilip Kumar Sahu and Bharati Tudu after setting up an inquiry committee headed by Development Commissioner DK Singh in the wake of Majhi’s order to conduct a probe into errors found in textbooks.
The government has also initiated disciplinary proceedings against six assistant directors – Pandita Patnaik, Manas Ranjan Raut, Manoranjana Mahapatra, Prashant Kumar Sahoo, Manas Kumar Nayak and Sudarshan Santara.
The government accepted all 14 recommendations made by the Inquiry to reform the textbook preparation and review process. Among the measures are creation of a master error register to record and track corrections, mandatory reporting of all corrections to students, and establishment of a dedicated quality assurance cell within SCERT to enhance quality control.
The government has also directed that no textbook should be sent for printing without mandatory approvals for language, content, illustrations and print quality. According to the Prime Minister’s Office, the reforms aim to improve academic standards and ensure greater accountability in the preparation of textbooks.
The action follows widespread outrage after the school and mass education administration discovered errors in textbooks for grades one to eight during an internal review conducted after their distribution.
Brahmananda Maharana, president of the Odisha Primary Teachers’ Association, said 1,678 errors had been identified in the textbooks, ranging from misspellings and inaccuracies in facts to incorrect names of prominent figures and faulty photographs. The image of the Karnataka Legislative Assembly instead of the image of Odisha is among the errors reported. Physicist Isaac Newton has been described as a “great aviator”, while the UNESCO World Heritage Site at Hampi in Karnataka has been misidentified as the Konark Sun Temple in Odisha.
The errors raised questions about the auditing and quality control mechanisms used in preparing textbooks. As the academic session began, officials said textbooks needed to be corrected as soon as possible.
The SCERT team, which prepared the textbooks, initially called it a “beta edition” and described the errors as “minor.” It subsequently issued a correction to schools, directing teachers to manually correct errors while teaching in classrooms.
The opposition parties, Biju Janata Dal and Congress, described the incident as a “national embarrassment” and demanded withdrawal of the books.
The textbook errors came at a time when the state had dramatically expanded textbook production. According to estimates from the Odisha School Education Program Authority (OSEPA), nearly 2.98 lakh crore textbooks have been printed for the 2026-27 academic session, up from around 2.70 lakh crore in the previous year.
