BENGALURU: The Text Book Society of Karnataka which prints and publishes text books for state-affiliated schools has not done an audit of its accounts for the past 10 years.This was revealed by the accounts officer of the Text Book Society G Nijaguna Murthy in a letter written to the Commissioner for Public Instructions. In the letter which was sent to the commissioner in December 2015, the accounts officer requested the commissioner for an audit of the society’s accounts.
Following the letter, the then Commissioner for Public Instructions K S Sathyamurthy communicated to the principal accountant general of the state requesting an audit of the society. But even 10 months later, no efforts have been taken to conduct an audit.
As per information available from the society, the state government has given around `79,889.6 lakh as grant to the Text Book Society since its inception in 2006 to 2015.Though text books are given free of cost to government and aided school children from Classes 1 to 10, the society has derived an income of `17,691.92 lakh from 2010-11 onwards, after it started sales of text books to unaided schools.
This was mentioned in the letter written by accounts officer of the society. But, till date, no auditing has been done.
Reacting to this,Nagendra Kumar, MD of Text Book Society of Karnataka, said, “The auditors thought that the Text Book Society has nothing to do with the state government and so they did not do the auditing all these years. We did the auditing for the last financial year and if the government wants to do it again, we have no issues.”