‘Scats’, ‘permiision’, ‘appoint nent’, ‘annunces’, ‘scated’, ‘Calcutta High resume Court’. These aren’t the jottings of a below-average primary student, but part of the programme schedule sent with the invitation for the swearing-in of West Bengal governor MK Narayanan.
Starting from the first line itself, the one-page schedule had 16 howlers — including spelling, punctuation, typographic and grammatical mistakes — leaving the state’s Information and Cultural Affairs [I and CA] department embarrassed.
“We noticed the mistakes only at the venue,” said Subesh Das, principal secretary to the chief minister. Das is also a top bureaucrat at the I&CA department.
A lame excuse, considering the schedule had reached invitees two days before the ceremony, along with the invitation card and a car sticker.
“Such material is printed
at the government-owned Saraswati press. Those who proof-read drafts should have been more careful,” said Tanmay Chakravarti, under-secretary at the I and CA.
The department is headed by Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, known for his strong literary inclinations.