UP Board students to face 3-month wait for new session textbooks
The textbooks will be available in the market only by the end of June or the first week of July, as per board officials
Even though the 2025-26 session is set to start on April 1 in secondary schools across the state, more than 1 crore students of classes 9 to 12 enrolled in over 27,000 schools affiliated with the UP Board will have to wait for at least another three months for National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) books for the new academic session.
The textbooks will be available in the market only by the end of June or the first week of July, as per board officials.
UP Board uses the republished versions of NCERT textbooks. Although NCERT textbooks are the cheapest in the country, the rate at which the UP Board publishes these very books with due permission from NCERT for UP students is even lower. This is why lakhs of students wait for UP Board books.
So far, the UP Board issued the tender for its Hindi, Sanskrit and Urdu textbooks on March 12, and the bids are set to be opened on April 4, but permission to issue the tender for NCERT books has not yet been received from the state government. The director of secondary education and chairman of the UP Board, Mahendra Dev, had sought permission from the state government in October 2024 to formally seek copyright permission for the books from NCERT.
According to officials of the state secondary education department, permission is expected from the state government by the end of March, after which the printing process will start, and it will take at least three months for the books to become available in the market.
It usually takes one month to issue the tender, get bids and award the contract. After that, it takes another month for the publishers to make their preparations for the mega exercise of publishing lakhs of books on different subjects, and then a minimum of one more month is required for the actual printing of the textbooks and their delivery to the market.
However, the good news is that the state government has allowed payment of more than ₹2 crores as royalty and GST, clearing the way for the publication of NCERT books in this session. Last year, the books could not be published due to a dispute between the UP Board and the publishers over this very issue.
UP Board secretary Bhagwati Singh said, “The process of publishing the books has started, and in the next three months, NCERT books for all classes will become available in the market.”
Books become available only by July each year
Despite the new session starting on April 1 and claims by state secondary education department officials that textbooks will be available on time, the books actually reach the market only by July every year. Last year, the books could not be printed at all. In previous sessions, too, the books were only made available in the market by July. Due to this delay, most students are forced to buy comparatively expensive books published by unauthorised publishers. As soon as the session starts, teachers start pressuring students to buy books and most students purchase these expensive books in April itself.
While Kesar Vidyapeeth Inter College, Prayagraj, teacher Lalmani Dwivedi said that if NCERT books have to be printed by the UP Board, the reason for the delay every year is beyond understanding. Due to the delay, the financial burden on parents increases, and students have to study from unauthorised books, he said.
