Thiruvananthapuram: The Congress-led opposition on Thursday lashed out at Kerala Education Minister M.A. Baby for his failure to ensure timely delivery of textbooks at government schools.

Seeking to move an adjournment motion in the assembly, Congress legislator P.C. Vishnunath said that close to 40 percent of the books are yet to be distributed.

"The postal department has been entrusted the task of distributing textbooks to the respective places and it appears that never before has such an unscientific method of distribution been adopted in the state," said Vishnunath.

"At most schools it has come to light that the authorities have got books which they did not order. Textbooks for Class 10 for subjects like IT and Hindi are yet to arrive even after a month of the opening of schools," said Vishnunath.

Government schools in the state opened on June 1. The state education department engaged three agencies for printing textbooks and entered into a tie up with the postal department for delivering them at educational institutions at a cost of Rs.9.60 per kg.

Replying to the allegations, Baby said that every year similar problems were encountered but this time the delivery of textbooks was undertaken through a scientific process involving the postal department.

"In all 4.51 crore textbooks have to be printed and in the first phase 3.11 crore textbooks have to be distributed of which we have done 2.99 crore. We have set up a separate committee for the monitoring of the distribution," he said.

"This is the first time that we have used the services of the postal department and hence some problems might have come up, but things will be smoother the next time and very soon whatever shortcomings are there would be taken care of," said Baby. IANS