The Telangana Education Department may recall school textbooks printed with a foreword mentioning K. Chandrasekhar Rao as the Chief Minister.
The Telugu textbooks for Classes 1 to 10 were printed for the academic year 2024-25 with a foreword thanking 'Chief Minister' Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR) and 'Education Minister' P. Sabitha Indra Reddy.
The fiasco has embarrassed the Congress government, which is likely to take a decision on Friday on withdrawing the books and re-printing them. The blunder in the textbooks printed by the State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT), a wing of the School Education Department, was noticed when the distribution of books started on Wednesday, the first day of the new academic year.
After noticing the faux pas, some officials gave directions to school teachers to tear off the page but the other side of the page had the national anthem on it.
The foreword, copied and printed from the earlier edition, thanked ‘Chief Minister’ Chandrashekhar Rao, the 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 have been mentioned in the thanksgiving note. Sabitha Indra Reddy was Education Minister between 2019 and 2023 while Srihari and Reddy had held the posts earlier. 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 SCERT apparently copied and printed the foreword from the textbooks of 2022. It did not even change the date.
The Congress came to power in December 2023, ending the nearly 10-year-long rule of the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS).
Meanwhile, Sabitha Indra Reddy has found fault with the Congress government’s reported 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.
