Odisha govt. suspends four senior officials for 1,678 mistakes in new school textbooks

The Odisha government on Friday, June 26, 2026, suspended four senior officials, including Manoj Padhi, former director of the State Council of Education, Research and Training (SCERT), and took disciplinary action against six others, holding them responsible for over 2,000 errors in textbooks taught in Classes 1 to 8.

Action was taken after the commission formed under the chairmanship of the Development Commissioner submitted an inspection report to examine the errors in school textbooks. While teachers pointed out a total of over 2,100 errors in the textbooks published for the 2026-27 academic year, the government admitted 1,678 errors.

Odisha Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi issued directions to remove SCERT’s then director Manoj Padhi and three deputy directors Pralipta Mishra, Dilip Kumar Sahu and Bharati Tudu.

Disciplinary proceedings were also initiated against six assistant directors (Bandita Pattnaik, Manas Ranjan Rout, Manoranjan Mohapatra, Prashant Kumar Sahu, Manas Kumar Nayak and Sudarshan Santara).

“SCERT will prepare a Master Error Register and provide corrected information to all students and set up a Quality Assurance Cell,” the Chief Minister’s Office said.

Improvement suggestions

The committee put forward 14 recommendations aimed at improving students’ education and correcting errors.

“The government will provide replacement pages or reprinted annexes for serious errors. Once the online errors are corrected, the corrected PDF will be declared as the official teaching version. Immediate correction orientation for teachers has been recommended,” the CMO said in a statement.

While the high-powered committee called for the preparation of a liability matrix for each error, it recommended that reasoned notifications be made and appropriate measures be taken against the DTP institution, the printer and the certifying authority.

Textbook quality assurance cell

It has also been suggested to create a textbook quality assurance cell in SCERT. “It has been recommended to form subject-wise Curriculum Area Groups and book-wise Textbook Development Committees as per the NCERT model,” the committee stated.

“Introduction of a foolproof system and final locked PDF mechanism and provision of penalties, performance scoring and blacklisting of printers/DTP vendors has also been recommended,” the committee said, adding that in future “no textbook should go to press without final academic, language, literal image, factual accuracy and production quality checks.”