Bhubaneswar: After Dharmendra Pradhan resigned from the post of the Union education minister on Saturday over NEET-UG paper leak, the opposition parties in Odisha have renewed their demand for the resignation of school and mass education minister Nityananda Gond, holding him accountable for the textbook errors that have sparked widespread criticism across the state.The opposition alleged that while political accountability was enforced at the national level, the Odisha govt was shielding its minister despite large-scale errors in newly introduced school textbooks that disrupted the academic session and embarrassed the state.Although the school and mass education department has begun the process of revising all 55 textbooks, the BJD’s student wing, Biju Chhatra Janata Dal (BCJD), warned that it would intensify its statewide agitation if Gond does not step down.
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The BCJD’s Arun Sahoo and Ipsita Sahoo said the minister should accept moral responsibility for the lapses instead of shifting the blame to officials. The student wing had launched its ‘Save Education’ campaign last week over the issue.Odisha Pradesh Congress Committee president Bhakta Charan Das echoed the demand, saying Pradhan’s resignation alone does not address the concerns of the people of Odisha. “There are over 2,000 errors in the textbooks, yet the state govt and chief minister Mohan Charan Majhi have continued to ignore the issue,” Das told reporters in Bhubaneswar. He demanded that Gond resign and that the govt announce a clear timeline for supplying error-free textbooks to students.Rejecting the demand as politically motivated, BJP state vice-president Golak Mohapatra said both the BJD and Congress should recall the irregularities in examinations during their own tenures before seeking Gond’s resignation. “How many ministers had resigned then? The state govt has already initiated the process of revising the textbooks. We acknowledge that the books could have been free of errors had there been more time for preparation, but one cannot overlook the fact that 55 new textbooks were produced to implement the National Education Policy in Odisha,” he said.Mohapatra also defended Pradhan, saying the Union minister resigned only after ensuring that the re-NEET examination was conducted and its results declared so that genuine students were not affected.Meanwhile, State Council of Educational Research and Training has floated a tender to revise and prepare the corrected editions of all 55 textbooks. Officials said the revised books will undergo multiple rounds of scrutiny before being sent for printing, and are expected to be ready for print by Sept or Oct.
