Bhubaneswar: When Odisha Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi declared that the discovery of 1,678 errors in newly introduced Class I to VIII textbooks "smells like a conspiracy," political opponents dismissed it as an attempt to shift blame.

But the findings of the high-level three-member inquiry committee headed by the Development Commissioner paint a far more disturbing picture.

The committee's report, now accepted in full by the state government, does not merely point to spelling mistakes or editorial negligence. Instead, it reveals the collapse of almost every institutional safeguard built into Odisha's textbook preparation system.

Taking the findings seriously, the Chief Minister has accepted all 14 structural recommendations, suspended four senior SCERT officials - including the former Director of Teachers' Training and SCERT- and initiated disciplinary proceedings against six Assistant Directors.

The Scale of Irresponsibility

How does an entire state machinery print books that rename Sir Isaac Newton a "pilot," relocate the Niyamgiri Hills to Jharkhand, mistake the Karnataka Assembly for Odisha’s own temple of democracy, and confuse the Equinox with the Equator?

According to high-level departmental sources, the answer lies in a calculated subversion of SCERT’s mandatory verification channels. Under normal protocols, textbooks undergo a meticulous five-tier gatekeeping process before digital plates are shipped to the Text Book Production & Marketing (TBP&M) wing.

How Odisha's Textbooks Are Actually Prepared

Although Odisha's revised curriculum follows the broad principles of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, the entire academic exercise – from syllabus planning to chapter writing, translation, editing and final approval – is handled by the State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT) under the Odisha Curriculum Framework.

For the current curriculum overhaul, SCERT constituted a State-Level Syllabus Committee comprising SCERT faculty members, experienced government school teachers and university subject experts.

The drafting process begins with Writers' Workshops, where subject specialists prepare manuscripts. These drafts are then compiled by an Editorial Board before entering a mandatory multi-layer verification system.

Under the established protocol, every textbook should pass through five successive checkpoints:

• Internal verification by the drafting team.
• Language and syntax review by editors and language experts.
• Independent external academic review by specialists outside SCERT.
• Administrative and academic approval by the SCERT Directorate.
• Final technical verification by the Text Book Production and Marketing (TBP&M) wing before printing.

The system is designed so that even if one layer misses an error, subsequent stages are expected to detect it.

The Anatomy of the Sabotage

1.     The External Peer-Review Blackout: Top sources in the SCERT has confirmed that Gate 3 – the Independent Blind Peer Review – was entirely bypassed. Manuscripts compiled during rushed internal workshops were never dispatched to independent university professors, scientists, or historians. SCERT officials operated in an insulated echo chamber, vetting their own colleagues' work and rubber-stamping drafts.

2.     The Machine Translation Blunder: The most alarming finding centres on language and content transformation. Massive blocks of curriculum framework were run through cheap, automated digital translation tools to meet tight deadlines. Human editors at the language verification desk signed off on these chapters without executing line-by-line validation, causing fundamental scientific and historical concepts to be completely inverted in translation.

3.     The Unverified Graphics Pipeline: The inclusion of out-of-state landmarks happened during the graphic layout phase at private commercial presses. Layout designers routinely use external placeholder images to format text blocks. SCERT’s technical verification cell was legally required to cross-verify every plate. Instead, they authorized mass printing blindly, letting placeholder layouts pass through as final educational content.

Why the Chief Minister Suspects More Than Negligence

Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi observed that while textbook errors had occurred in previous years, the scale witnessed this time was unprecedented.

"The entire process – from manuscript preparation and vetting to printing – needs scrutiny. I suspect a larger conspiracy to defame the government," the Chief Minister said.

The inquiry report does not concluded that a conspiracy took place. However, its findings document widespread procedural failures across multiple stages of textbook preparation.

For the Chief Minister, the unusually large number of errors – combined with the simultaneous breakdown of several mandatory verification layers – raises questions that extend beyond ordinary administrative negligence. It is here the sabotage angle creeps in.

Also Read: School Books / Textbook Errors May Be 'Conspiracy' To Defame Govt, Says Odisha CM