Hyderabad: Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) national president and former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati on Saturday slammed the Telangana government for ‘tampering with the Preamble of the Constitution printed on the cover of class 10 social sciences textbooks.
In a tweet, the BSP chief said that the disappearance of the words ‘secular’ and ‘socialist’ from the Preamble “raises questions on the integrity and functioning of the government.”
“Tampering with the Preamble of the Constitution printed on the cover of Class 10 Social Science books in Telangana and the disappearance of the words ‘secular’, ‘socialist’ raise questions on the integrity and functioning of the government. Such negligence is a serious matter. Government should pay attention. Obedience to the holy constitution is essential,” the BSP chief tweeted in Hindi.
Controversy erupted after the words ‘secular’ and ‘socialist’ were missing from the Preamble of the Constitution printed on the cover page of the class X State Council of Education Research and Training (SCERT) textbooks.
The SCERT in Telangana distributed the latest social studies textbook (both Telugu and English medium) as the state celebrated ‘Telangana Education Day’.
However, a grave mistake came to the notice of people when they opened the book. While the image of the Preamble on the inside pages has the words ‘Socialist’ and ‘Secular’, the cover page had them missed out.
With the 42nd Amendment made to the Constitution in 1976, the words ‘Socialist’ and ‘Secular’ were added to the existing ‘Sovereign Democratic Republic’ in the Preamble.
However, the new SCERT textbooks stirred controversy as the Premble printed on them was altered in contradiction to the amendment.
Following the controversy, SCERT director M Radha Reddy issued a statement that the mistake was ‘unintentional’ and occurred due to oversight while downloading the image at the time of designing the cover.
However, the inner pages of other textbooks had the Preamble intact. Though it is uncertain if the department had called for an enquiry on the mistake but the Telangana State United Teachers’ Federation (TSUTF) officials have however called for a thorough investigation.
TSUFF officials stated that minor issues related to printing happen every year but a mistake in the Preamble is unacceptable, especially when the Secular aspect of India was facing a threat.
