E-portal will replace Balchitrawani

Mumbai: The state government ordered the closure of Maharashtra state institute of education technology , popularly known as Balchitrawani with immediate effect on Wednesday. The institute, which developed educational programmes will be replaced with e-balchitrawani in which the digital content will be created. According to the government resolution, the new platform will develop virtual classrooms and audio-visual textbook lessons on a specially designed web portal for Classes 1 to 12 of the state board.

Throwing light on the decision, a former official of the state board said that Balchitrawani was started on January 27, 1984, and the institute had developed some 6,000 learning programmes for education. The institute was initially funded entirely by the central government, but in 2003 when the state was asked to bear the expenditure of running the institute, the state expressed its inability to do so.

To make matters worse in 2012 the Doordarshan, which aired the programmes developed by Balchitrawani for free, decided to charge for telecasting audio-video programmes of Balchitrawani. However, due to lack of funds to meet the demand of Doordarshan, Balchitrawani programmes were stopped, and subsequently, production too came to a halt.

The resolution said that in light of the fact that many state and private schools have gone digital, the state government was mulling over changing the face of Balchitrawani. The resolution added, “With most educational institutions already having a lot of online content, the very existence of the institute had become irrelevant and redundant hence it was decided to bring down the curtains on it.”

The resolution, however, said that the form of Balchitrawani would change and it willremain active in a different form. The salaries of the existing staff and pending dues
have been already settled; hence the state has decided to close down the institute with immediate effect, the GR added.