Recently, the Yogi Adityanath government has planned to distribute free textbooks to students. As part of that plan, a Hindi textbook called ‘Batika’ has been published for class V.

The new academic year started in schools in Uttar Pradesh last April. But the book was published quite recently. The ‘wrong’ national anthem is printed on the last page of the book. The book with the ‘wrong’ national anthem has already been distributed to around two and a half to three lakh students. And then this serious bug was caught.

The Uttar Pradesh government has faced a major controversy over this wrong printing of the national anthem. Educationists have expressed deep concern over the omission of the names of these two eastern states from the national anthem. According to them, the national anthem has been insulted. However, the government claims that it is entirely the printer’s fault.

The government has initiated damage control to raise the debate in the Yogi state. According to sources, the Principal Education Officer of Uttar Pradesh was given the responsibility to check whether the books were printed properly or not. The primary school department has sent a show cause notice to the official as soon as the book was found to be wrong.

However, Kaushambi Primary Education Officer Prakash Singh claims that this situation has arisen due to printer’s error.

Whosoever, if it be a mistake, it looms large that not all literate Indians still know their national anthem. Even after 75 years, even with the ongoing Azaadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav.