Congress committee protests over alleged ‘errors’ in textbooks; Demands Nityanand Gond’ ouster

The Odisha Pradesh Congress Committee(OCC) announced a statewide agitation demanding the resignation of School and Mass Education Minister Nityanand Gond over alleged large-scale errors in government school textbooks.

Announcing the protest program at Congress Bhavan in Odisha, AICC Odisha in-charge Lalji Desai said the leaders and workers would stage demonstrations across the state, seeking the minister’s resignation and comprehensive reforms in the education sector.

Interacting with the media during the protests, the AICC chief expressed concerns over the reported mistakes in school textbooks. AICC Odisha in-charge Lalji Desai highlighted that there are 1,678 errors across textbooks for classes 1 through 8, with 705 errors in the Class 8 textbooks alone.” They depicted the Hampi temple instead of our Konark temple, showed the Karnataka Legislative Assembly instead of Odisha’s, and even portrayed the Niyamgiri Hills as being located in Jharkhand, he said”.According to him these errors could not be a mistake instead are deliberate attmepts by the State Education Ministry. He held the opposition party responsible for financial loss of approximately Rs 200 crore to Odisha’s budget.Desai alleged that the BJP government, which had come to power on the promise of protecting Odia asmita, was now undermining Odisha’s identity through repeated lapses in governance. He further alleged that nearly 10,000 government schools in the state had been shut down, while around 80,000 teaching posts remaining vacant.Reiterating the party’s stand, OPCC president Bhakta Charan Das warned that Congress would intensify its agitation if the minister failed to resign within seven days. He said the party would call for an Odisha bandh if its demands were ignored. Das questioned why the state minister should not resign over what he described as unpardonable mistakes in school textbooks, arguing that if a union minister could resign for negligence, the same standard should apply to the state minister.