Ranchi: Students of Class 8 in Jharkhand will suddenly find themselves without their history textbooks as the National Council of Education Research and Training (NCERT) says the books were printed without its permission and have to be withdrawn.

The NCERT has asked the state's Human Resource Development (HRD) department to get the copyright permission before it gets the Class 8 history textbooks printed.

"We had sent several reminders to the NCERT last year regarding the copyright. The NCERT, however, did not respond to our request and we considered it a silent acceptance of our proposal," claimed an HRD official here.

The department has got around 196,000 books printed from Kolkata. It has already paid Rs.5.6 million to the printer and distributed the books in April. But when the issue was brought to the notice of the NCERT, it asked for their withdrawal.

Jharkhand Education Project director Arun Ekka said: "Every year we have been adopting the same process. But this time, when we got the books printed and distributed, the NCERT asked us to withdraw them."

Five years ago, Jharkhand had adopted the NCERT guidelines and started reprinting NCERT-produced books to improve the educational level of its students. But the copyright issue has been creating problems.

Officials here say every year students get their books two to three months late due to delay by the NCERT in giving reprint permission.