Tamil Nadu CM hits out at oppn over mistakes in textbooks

Updated on: Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa sought to turn the tables on the opposition when it sought correction in textbooks under the Uniform System of School Education (USSE), saying the latter had insisted on immediate implementation of the scheme while the government wanted to defer it to scrutinise the books.

"How can textbooks with mistakes can be corrected when they are already being distributed?" a visibly upset Jayalalithaa said in the Assembly, responding to CPI-M member K Balakrishnan who mentioned that some corrections were needed in the textbooks.

"Many of you including the CPI(M) and PMK wanted us to implement USSE 'Samacheer Kalvi' this year itself when we explained that we needed at least a year to make the corrections in the textbooks. Since the Supreme Court ordered implementation of the USSE this year, we are implementing the system now," she said.

Many leaders from various parties insisted on implementing the system this year and "now you are complaining of corrections," she said.

PMK member J Guru also wanted certain corrections to be made in the textbooks.

School Education Minister C Ve Shanmugam admitted that there were several bloopers in the books such as the wrong date of the death of former prime minister Lalbhadur Shastri.

He said while the Muthukumaran Committee which went into proposal for Samacheer Kalvi made 109 recommendations, the previous DMK government accepted only four of them resulting in lack of adequate infrastructure to support the new system.

His ministry was now working on improving the infrastructure, he said.

In one of its first acts after coming to power in the April 13 assembly polls, the AIADMK government deferred implementation of 'samacheer kalvi' by amending the relevant act leading to a legal battle in the Madras High Court and Supreme Court which directed it to implement the scheme from this year.

Tamil Nadu CM hits out at oppn over mistakes in textbooks

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