Delhi Education Minister Manish Sisodia on Tuesday inaugurated the third edition of Mega Book Fair for the city government schools with 9,445 books put on display. Inaugurated at the School of Excellence, Rohini, the book fair which offers books for pre-primary, primary to senior secondary levels, will end on October 11.
Speaking at the occasion, Mr Sisodia said the representatives of all the 1,024 government schools of the Directorate of Education, have a responsible task of procuring the right books for their students.
Highlighting the need to regulate the quality of books reaching the libraries of the Delhi government schools, Mr Sisodia said, "It is a revolution in the system of libraries. This is an honest way of procuring books for our students based on their needs and also the requirement of the curriculum."
"Before 2016, each school used to make the purchase of books independently. The lack of proper mechanism involved in the procurement of books across these 1,024 schools also resulted in more number of poor-quality books purchased through lobbying and favours."
Advising a word of caution to the heads of schools against this illegal practice, Mr Sisodia said, "It is a huge responsibility for all of you here who are instrumental in picking up books for our students. Choose books wisely without falling into the greed of any kind. It is the future of these students that you are going to shape by procuring the right kind of books into the libraries. So be careful."
The Delhi Government has allocated Rs 9 crore for the libraries of all the government schools of Directorate of Education for the academic year 2019-20, out of which 50 per cent will be reserved for classes 9 to 12 for subject reading, while the rest will go to books used for general reading.
The Heads of Schools accompanied by the Library Purchase Committee will be visiting the fair and select their own basket of books.
The publishers will receive demands from the visiting schools entailing the title, subject and number of copies required which they will supply to the respective schools at their doorstep.
Schools would then go on to release the payments of the publishers as soon as the books are delivered to them.
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