After row, Odisha pulls back Mahatma booklet

ODISHA: A day after the controversy over a booklet on Mahatma Gandhi, which said the Father of Nation died due to accidental reasons, the Odisha government on Saturday said the mistake was unintentional and announced its withdrawal.

The state’s minister for school and mass education, Sami Ranjan Dash, said in the Assembly on Saturday that the government had no intention of presenting children with wrong information, create confusion or alter the sequence of events.

“It was unintentional. The state government has already withdrawn the booklet and served a showcause notice to two officials. Two officials have been suspended over their negligence,” Dash said. The two-page booklet, published by the school and mass education department, would be corrected and redistributed among school children, he added.

‘Ama Bapuji: Eka Jhalaka (Our Bapuji: A Glimpse)’ was distributed in all the 53,000-odd schools to commemorate his 150th birth anniversary.

The assembly had witnessed a furore on Friday over the booklet that purportedly said Mahatma Gandhi died due to accidental reasons on January 30, 1948. The Opposition Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party had slammed chief minister Naveen Patnaik.

Several intellectuals in the state also criticised the misrepresentation of facts. “The inaccuracies are too glaring and would mislead the younger generations who would assume that Gandhiji died of some accident and was not murdered by Nathuram Godse,” said activist Prafulla Samantra.

FIR AGAINST HINDU OUTFIT IN MP, NO ARRESTS

An FIR was registered against some activists of Hindu Mahsabha for allegedly distributing pamphlets containing “objectionable words” about Mahatma Gandhi in Madhya Pradesh’s Gwalior, police said on Saturday.