Calcutta, July 17: The West Bengal
Council for Higher Secondary Education today placed a proposal before
Calcutta High Court for settling the impasse over printing of Class XI
textbooks requesting for status quo for this year.
Justice Sanjib
Banerjee after hearing out the proposal directed the council’s lawyer,
advocate-general Bimal Chatterjee, to hold meeting with the
representatives of both the publishing houses — Orient Blackswan and
Punascha — and inform the court about the outcome tomorrow.
The
advocate-general today accepted that justice had not been done to
Punascha, the publisher that moved court citing a discrepancy in the
tender process of the HS council.
According to the
council’s proposal, Orient Blackswan should be allowed to publish
textbooks on six subjects this year and Punascha should print books on
two other subjects.
However, for the
next two years, Punascha would be allowed to publish textbooks for six
subjects and text books for the two other subjects would be printed by
other publishers, according to the council’s proposal.
“Advocate-general
will hold a discussion on the council’s proposal with the two publishing
houses and inform the court about the outcome of the discussion by
tomorrow,” the judge said.
Punascha, a
city-based publishing house had moved the case in the high court
challenging the legality of the tender process adopted by the council
for printing this year’s Class XI books.
The petitioner
alleged that even though it had agreed to pay a royalty of 35 per cent,
the council had awarded tender to Hyderabad-based Orient Blackswan to
print the textbooks of six subject against a payment of only 26 per cent
royalty. The council had asked Punascha to publish textbooks only of
two subjects.
In response to the
petition, Justice Banerjee had issued an interim order restraining the
council from proceeding with the tender process till further order of
the court.
As a result, nearly 8 lakh students of Class XI this academic year have landed in trouble
When the matter
came up for hearing before the court today, the advocate-general
informed the judge that his client had chalked out a formula for
resolving the stalemate
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