Bengaluru, DHNS: Brushes aside officials' claim that printing could be delayed. The confusion over introducing new textbooks from Class I to X from the next academic year has ended. Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Wednesday issued stern directions to education department officials to introduce the revised format of textbooks from the academic year 2017-18.

The task of revising the books was assigned to the Baragur Ramachandrappa Committee. Siddaramaiah gave these directions during a meeting convened by him in Bengaluru on?Wednesday.

According to sources, senior officials of the department tried to convince Siddaramaiah to put off introduction of new textbooks by a year.

They were concerned that since revision of textbooks was still under progress, it would be difficult to print and distribute them to all the schools on time.

However, Ramachandrappa, who is the chairman of the committee, said it would not be appropriate to continue with the present textbooks, which had several glaring errors.

He also objected to the officials’ claims on the progress in producing new books. He is said to have informed the chief minister that revision of textbooks, DTP, page design, etc, had all been completed and only editing the draft editions remained to be completed.

Since the officer in charge has been deputed elsewhere, work had been delayed.
Officials however contended that the revised textbooks were yet to be translated to English and that this would take at least three months.

They said that since textbook printing would be taken up in January, there might be unforeseen delays.

Ramachandrappa again objected to this and requested Siddaramaiah to reinstate personnel who were initially deputed to complete the process. He also said that all work will be completed within a month if such an arrangement was made.

He recalled that there were also instances where textbooks were given to the printer in February, just before the academic year started.

Sources said Siddaramaiah told officials that the Ramachandrappa Committee had been revising textbooks for the last two years, and since he had assured him that they would be readied on time, the government should introduce the new textbooks from the next academic year.