20 Crore Spent By State Govt On Printing The Books Goes Down The Drain
The printers and publishers of Intermediate textbooks are in a fix three weeks after reopening of colleges. About 50 per cent of the 12 lakh books that were distributed to students will now have to be called back as several errors have crept into the books.
    Errors were found in science textbooks on the basis of which Eamcet question papers are set. The students will now have to wait for over three more months to get the corrected proofs. The textbooks were printed by Telugu Academy.
    As a result of the bloomers, the Rs 20 crore spent by the government in printing of the textbooks has gone down the drain. Printing of new set of textbooks would cost as much or even more, officials said.
    The state government and the academy remained oblivious to the mistakes till last week. The academy woke up and withdrew the Inter textbooks only after being alerted by teachers from private colleges. Several colleges, including those belonging to Narayana and Chaitanya group of institutions, complained about the mistakes in the textbooks.
    Most of the mistakes were found in Chemistry and Physics textbooks. Experts have said that over 300 of 800
pages in each of the books will
have to be reprinted with corrections.
The errors were caused as
Telugu university started printing the textbooks late this year. “Proper proof reading was not done and because of this there are mistakes in sentence construction, grammar and even spelling. There are mistakes in basic concepts and in some cases wrong explanations are given. In some books appendix is missing,” said an official from Telugu Academy.
    An expert panel is currently going through the errors and correcting the same. A reprint of the textbooks will come out in three months, officials said.
    Meanwhile, students complained that their classes were suspended due to non-availability of textbooks. “We have not been having classes as college officials have said that they will start teaching only after the new textbooks without errors reach them,” said an Inter first year student. They lament missing about 15 working days after the beginning of the academic year.
    College managements said that they cannot start teaching using any other textbooks as the government has issued an order stating that only Telugu Academy’s textbooks should be used.
    “If the state cannot supply textbooks on time they should at least allow us to use textbooks of our choice,” said a senior faculty member of a college in the city.