Bhubaneswar: School and Mass Education Minister Nityananda Gond on Thursday termed media reports about errors in the Class-1 Odia textbook for English medium private schools as “exaggerated” and said the government will soon distribute corrected versions to students.
The statement came after a meeting with Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi at the CM’s chamber. The controversy erupted after alleged mistakes were found in the National Anthem and the state song in the Class-1 Odia textbook supplied by the state government to English medium private schools. While these schools are privately run, the Odia textbooks are provided by the state.
Rejecting the allegations, Gond said, “The media reports are not based on facts. The kind of errors being reported since yesterday do not exist in the manner they are being projected.”
On reports that the Bollywood song ‘Nimbooda Nimbooda’ from the 1999 film Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam was included in the textbook, the minister said it was being misrepresented.
“The National Education Policy encourages students to be exposed to songs and cultural content from different states. That is why Nimbooda Nimbooda was included in Odisha textbooks,” he explained.
Gond accused a section of the media of spreading misinformation and urged them not to “propagate negativity.”
The clarification follows the department’s statement on Wednesday that called the allegations of errors in Class-1 English medium textbooks “unjustified.”
The fresh row comes amid an ongoing CID-Crime Branch probe into large-scale errors in textbooks for Classes 1 to 8 in Odia medium government schools. Over 1,600 mistakes, including spelling errors and wrong names of eminent personalities, were found in 55 books supplied by the department.
Taking note of the issue, Chief Minister Majhi has ordered a CID probe and has hinted at a “conspiracy” behind the publication of error-ridden textbooks.
