Bhubaneswar, September 21: The Odisha Government on Monday started distributing new school textbooks, incorporating necessary corrections, with around 45,000 revised books being distributed on the first day in Khurda and Cuttack districts.
The first-day distribution includes Odia textbooks for Classes II, III, IV, V and VI, and Urdu textbooks for Classes VI, VII and VIII. As per the distribution details, a total of 41,150 Odia books and 3,150 Urdu books have been allocated to the identified areas.
In the first phase, textbooks were distributed in Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) areas and Jatani and Janala of Khurda district and Cuttack Sadar, Salepur and Nischintakoili areas of Cuttack district.
The distribution of the corrected textbooks will be extended to other districts in a phased manner in the coming days.
For the context, the State Government came under sharp criticism in June this year after several newly-introduced textbooks for the 2026-27 academic session were found to contain hundreds of factual, grammatical and printing errors. The controversy prompted the State Government to order a Crime Branch inquiry and fix accountability for the lapses.
The Crime Branch also arrested Manoj Kumar Padhy (57), former Director of Teacher Education & State Council of Educational Research and Training (TE & SCERT), for deliberately allowing error‑ridden content to be published and circulated among students of classes I–VIII, causing embarrassment to the Government.
More than 1,60 errors were found in textbooks for Classes 1 to VIII triggering widespread resentment among teachers and students.
