Biratnagar, May 21:

Students of Grade IX and X of Morang district shut the Biratnagar bazaar today after they could not get textbooks. They also vandalised the District Education Office Morang. Three student protesters were hurt when the police resorted to lathi-charge to control the situation.

The students also burnt tyres at the main market in Biratnagar and brought vehicular movement to a halt. A group of students from government schools chanted slogans against the government outside the DEO. The police resorted to lathi-charge after the students started hurling stones at the DEO, said deputy superintendent of police Bidyananda Majhi.

The students also vandalised bookshops in Biratnagar.

All other book shops downed shutters as the students smashed windowpanes of the main market-based Manoj Books Store.

Protesting students also vandalised a bus of the Delhi Public School. Grade IX and X students of the Biratnagar-based Saraswoti and Satya Narayan secondary schools got agitated, as they could not get textbooks at a time when quarterly exams are approaching, said a student, Netra Poudel.

Narayan Bhattarai, an official at the Sajha Publication, which distributes books published by the Janak Educational Materials Centre, said some textbooks of Grade IX and X arrived in Biratnagar, adding that remaining books are expected soon.

Textbooks of Grade IX and X are available in Ramechhap district, but they are full of errors.

Students said science book of Grade IX has a portion of mathematics textbook (pages 1 to 26). Grade X textbooks of English, Mathematics and Population Studies have some empty pages. Classes have been affected due to these blunders, a teacher of the Mahendrodaya Higher Secondary School Dilliprasad Subedi said.

“Since most textbooks have errors, we are in no position to give them books that don’t have errors,” owner of the JN bookshop at Manthali, Bimala Acharya, said, informing that Sajha Publication, the distributor of books published by the JEMC, has promised to provide books sans errors.