The education department is faced with an arduous task of providing textbooks in the all the schools of the State before they reopen on July 1 after summer vacations. The department is claiming that 50 out of total 55 textbooks are printed and are sent to different district headquarters for distribution in the schools.
The Director of State Council of Education Research and Training (SCERT), Kusum Pant said that the publishers entrusted with printing the textbooks have assured that they would hand over all the books till June 28. She said that she is regularly monitoring the dispatch of books to the schools and assured that all the books in the schools would be made available till July 1, the day the school reopens.
Out of 55 textbooks Dehradun district has received 44, Almora 41, Tehri 39 and Pauri 36. The students belonging to Schedule Caste, Schedule Tribe (ST) and Other Backward Castes (OBC) are provided free textbooks by central government under Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) while the remaining students are provided textbooks by the state government.
It is worth mentioning here that delay in supply of textbooks occurred as bank guarantee of one of the publisher was found fake. Interestingly this publisher – Alok Printers Agra- was entrusted with task of supplying 36 books out of total 55 needed by the department. The fraudulent bank guarantee ensured a situation of panic in the department which cancelled the tender in the month of March and invited fresh tenders. The department also lodged a FIR with Raipur police station against the supplier. The department later handed over the task of printing 10 textbooks each to Gem Printers and Uttaranchal Converters while Raj Publisher was asked to print 9 and Dipak publishers 7 textbooks.