Imphal, February 09: Even as the Board of Secondary Education, Manipur is caught in the mess of issuing text books on the basis of Demi Official letters written by Ministers, it has found itself in another messy affair following its sly withdrawal of the FIR lodged against some employees for selling off text books without the formal permission from the Board.

Disclosing this to The Sangai Express, a highly placed source said that an FIR was registered with the Imphal police after matters came to light that some employees of BSEM had sold off the text books of a subject to a book store even before it was formally released by the Board.

However it has now been established that the BSEM had withdrawn the case keeping the Government in the dark over the matter.

When The Sangai Express contacted Education Minister Francis Ngajokpa, he said that the case is serious and promised that fitting action will be taken up against all those involved in withdrawing the case on the sly.

"Even if the BSEM is autonomous, the State Govt cannot simply look on when such messy affairs are happening inside the Board," said Francis.

The FIR was first lodged at the personal initiation of the Education (S) Commissioner after it came to light that some employees had sold off the text book of a particular subject for Class VI to VIII to a book store.

The BSEM was yet to formally release the text book when the employees sold it off on the sly.

The number of text books was huge, said the source.

However keeping the Education Minister and the Commissioner in the dark, the BSEM had quietly withdrawn the case against the accused.

The text books sold off on the sly was Hindi.

The necessary indent for purchasing the text books was also produced by the book store and some prominent officers of the BSEM had signed the indent asking that the books be issued to the said book store.

Education Commissioner P Bhorot informed The Sangai Express that he acted promptly when he came to know that the text books, which have not been released by the Board, were being sold in a book store.

"I personally instructed the BSEM to file a case and to seize the text books and the proprietor of the book store was also arrested," said the Education Commissioner.

Bhorot said he was kept in the dark when the case was withdrawn by the BSEM.

Taking strong exception over the action of the BSEM, Education Minister Francis Ngajokpa said that the matter is serious and fitting action will be taken up.

"The BSEM never informed me anything about withdrawing the case," said the Minister adding that the Secretary of BSEM explained that the books were sold off erroneously as the employee responsible for it could not read Hindi properly! Cracking the whip, Francis said that if anything amiss is detected then it will not be tolerated.

The text books should be released after proper screening too, said the Minister.

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