NCERT books for UP Board classes 9-12 to be available in July 1st week

Prayagraj: Over one crore students from classes 9 to 12 of 27,000 schools affiliated with the UP Board will have to wait at least three months for National Institute of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) books in the new session which is set to start on April 1. Officials said the books will be available only at the end of June or first week of July. Sources said the UP Board issued the tender for its books of Hindi, Sanskrit and Urdu on March 12 and will open it on April 4, but the permission for the tender for NCERT books has not been received from the govt yet.

Although, the director of secondary education and chairman of the UP Board, Mahendra Dev, sought permission from the govt in Oct itself to seek copyright of the books from NCERT. They added that the permission is expected by the end of March, after which the printing process will start, and it will take at least three months for the books to come to the market. It usually takes one month for the tender to be issued.



After that, publishers take about a month to prepare, and then a minimum of one month is required from publication to delivery to the market. However, the bright side is that the govt has allowed payment of more than Rs 2 crore of royalty and GST, which has cleared the way for the publication of NCERT books in this session. Last year, books were not published due to a dispute over money between UP Board and publishers.

UP Board secretary Bhagwati Singh said: "The process of publishing books has started, and it will be available in the market in three months." This is not the first time that the publishing of the books has been delayed. Despite the new session starting on April 1 and the claims of the secondary education department to make the books available on time, the books reach the market only by July every year.

In fact, last year, the books could not be printed at all. In the sessions before that too, the books were available only by July. Due to this, most of the students had to buy expensive and unauthorised books.

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