Publishers' group irked after meeting Vinod Tawde

The Association of Publishers and Distributors met to discuss the further course of action on Saturday after they were called by the Education Minister Vinod Tawde. The association has decided to write a letter to the Tawde, requesting him to speed up the process of framing a policy to facilitate private publishers bringing supplementary books in the market.

Recently, DNA had reported on how Balbharati, which publishes the textbooks for the Secondary School Certificate (SSC) exams, has copyrighted its material which has restricted private publishers from issuing supplementary books for the academic year 2018-2019. It led to anxiety among many SSC students who were struggling to buy supplementary books.

According to the publishers, this is the first time that the textbooks of Balbharati are being copyrighted. 

After the reportage, the members of the private publishers and publishers association were recently invited by the Education Minister Vinod Tawde for a meeting to discuss these issues.

One of the publishers said, "The meeting of publishers were called by the education minister this week. But, the minister neither told when the policy will come out for us nor did he say when the framing of the policy will begin. In fact, nothing concrete came out of the meeting."

Deepak Seth, Secretary of the Association of Publishers and Distributors, said, "The advertisement about the copyrighted textbooks came on April 9 in the newspaper and until now, there is no policy ready."