Telangana recalls Telugu textbook, shunts two officials for faux pas

Hyderabad, June 14: Taking a serious note of the blunder in school textbooks printed with a foreword mentioning K. Chandrasekhar Rao as the Chief Minister, the Congress government in Telangana on Friday cracked the whip on the officials responsible and recalled 24 lakh textbooks. 

The government ordered the transfer of S. Srinivasa Chary, Director, Government Text Book Press, and M. Radha Reddy, Director, State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT).

While Chary was asked to take charge as Additional Director, Model Schools, Radha Reddy was directed to take charge of Assistant State Project Director, Samagra Shiksha.

G. Ramesh, Additional Director, School Education, was appointed as the SCERT Director. Telangana Residential Educational Institutions Society (TREIS) Secretary Ramana Kumar was given the responsibility of the Director of Text Book Press.

The School Education Department on Friday decided to recall Telugu textbooks for Classes 1 to 10. After noticing the faux pas, the officials had stopped the distribution of the textbooks. The department decided to remove the foreword. Since the other side of the page carrying the foreword has the national anthem printed on it, the department decided to paste the national anthem on the inner side of the cover page, thus covering the foreword.

The Text Book Press had printed 24 lakh textbooks for the academic year 2024-25 with the foreword thanking ‘Chief Minister’ Chandrasekhar Rao and ‘Education Minister’ P. Sabitha Indra Reddy. The blunder was noticed when the distribution of books started on June 12, the first day of the new academic year and left the Congress government embarrassed.

The foreword, copied and printed from the earlier edition, thanked ‘Chief Minister’ Chandrashekhar Rao, Education Ministers and officials in the previous BRS governments for guidance and advice. Sabitha Indra Reddy, Kadiyam Srihari and Jagadish Reddy, who were all Education Ministers, were mentioned in the thanksgiving note. Sabitha Indra Reddy was Education Minister between 2019 and 2023 while Kadiyam Srihari and Jagadish Reddy had earlier held the posts. It also mentioned the names of former Education Secretary Ranjeev R. Acharya, former School Education Directors M Jagadeshwar and T. Chiranjeevulu, and advisor to government K.V. Ramanachary.

The Congress party came to power in December 2023, ending the nearly 10-year-long rule of the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS).

BRS leader and former Education Minister Sabitha Indra Reddy found fault with the Congress government’s move to recall the textbooks, saying this would result in wasting public money. "What is wrong if the textbooks have the name of KCR," she asked.