Bhubaneswar, July 11: In a significant escalation of the ongoing textbook controversy, Odisha Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi has ordered a full-scale criminal investigation into the string of errors discovered in school textbooks used by students from Class I to Class VIII. The Chief Minister has instructed the Director of the State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT) to lodge a First Information Report with the Superintendent of Police, Crime Branch, paving the way for a detailed criminal probe into how the flawed books came to be printed and distributed.

The decision follows the findings of a high-level inquiry committee headed by Development Commissioner D.K. Singh, which was set up earlier after complaints surfaced about the quality of the new textbooks rolled out for the 2026-27 academic session. The panel's review uncovered a staggering 1,678 confirmed errors — spelling mistakes, grammatical slips, and factual, historical and geographical inaccuracies — spread across 55 textbooks reaching more than 5.2 million students statewide.

Some of the blunders have drawn particular attention for their sheer implausibility. One textbook placed the birthplace of Lord Ram's twin sons, Luv and Kush, at the Sitabinji cave in Keonjhar district, while another shifted Odisha's own Niyamgiri Hills into neighbouring Jharkhand. Elsewhere, the Hampi Stone Chariot in Karnataka was mislabelled as Odisha's iconic Konark Sun Temple, and an image of Karnataka's Legislative Assembly building was wrongly captioned as belonging to Odisha. In yet another entry, celebrated physicist Isaac Newton was described as a pilot.

The errors triggered sharp criticism from teachers, parents, educationists and opposition parties alike, with critics accusing the ruling BJP government of undermining educational standards even as it promotes reforms under the National Education Policy. The government has pushed back against suggestions of casual negligence; at a closed-door meeting, the Chief Minister reportedly floated the possibility that the unusually high volume and nature of the mistakes could point to a deliberate attempt to embarrass his administration, though no formal claim to that effect has been made public.

Acting on the committee's report, the state had already suspended the former SCERT Director along with three Assistant Directors, and initiated disciplinary proceedings against six more officials. The government has now committed to adopting all 14 recommendations made by the panel, including compiling a master errata register, issuing corrected information to affected students, and creating a dedicated Quality Assurance Cell within SCERT to vet future publications.

Officials say that, going forward, no textbook will be cleared for printing without prior sign-off on its language, content, illustrations and print quality, with the stated goal of eliminating such errors entirely. The Crime Branch investigation is expected to examine whether negligence, procedural lapses or deliberate misconduct by anyone involved in the drafting, review or approval process led to the erroneous textbooks reaching classrooms across the state.

The probe marks one of the most serious accountability measures taken over textbook quality in Odisha in recent years, and its outcome could have implications for how the state manages curriculum development going forward.

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