The Telangana State Council of Educational Research and Training has landed in a controversy after it was found that the Preamble of the Constitution had been printed without the words “socialist” and “secular” in one of its textbooks, PTI reported on Saturday.
The error was spotted in the Social Studies textbook for Class 10 students after new books were distributed on June 20 to celebrate Telangana Education Day, according to The Indian Express.
“...The image of the Preamble of the Constitution in the inside pages has the words ‘Socialist’ and ‘Secular’, it is the cover page that has such a grave mistake,” a teacher told the newspaper.
The two words were not part of the Constitution adopted in 1950, and were added to the Preamble in 1976 through the 42nd Constitutional amendment.
In a statement, the State Council of Education Research and Training Director M Radha Reddy said that the error occurred due to an oversight. “This happened unintentionally while downloading the image at the time of designing the cover...The error crept in inadvertently,” Reddy said, according to PTI.
However, Chava Ravi, the secretary of the Telangana State United Teachers’ Federation told The Indian Express he suspected that the image had been printed intentionally as it was not possible that such a grave error would make it to the cover of a book by mistake.
“The publication of the old Constitution Preamble, as desired by some people, instead of the current Constitution Preamble printed on the textbooks printed by the Telangana state government gives rise to many suspicions,” the teachers’ body told the State Council of Education Research and Training in a letter. They have also demanded an inquiry into the matter.
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