Publishers of books for Uttar Pradesh Madhyamik Shiksha Parishad (UPMSP), also known as UP Board, will have to pay goods and services tax (GST) to the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), albeit through UP Board.
A proposal in this regard has been okayed by the state government and the NCERT. Having introduced NCERT books of all subjects for students of class 9 to class 12 in schools affiliated to it from last year, UP Board needs to not just pay the royalty for using these books but also the GST due on this royalty at a rate of 12%, inform officials aware of the development.
The royalty is calculated as 5% of the total cost of books printed by a body and the sheer scale of it can be understood by the fact that last year UP Board had paid Rs 7.98 crore to NCERT as royalty alone. If even this very amount is taken into consideration, the GST would amount to an additional over Rs 85.17 lakh, they add.
The NCERT had recently sent a missive to UP Board and asked it to clear the pending GST dues. However by the time the missive came, the UP Board had completed the tender awarding process for publication of the books and it was not in a position to pay the GST dues.
This was duly conveyed by the UP Board to the state government and the NCERT, the officials share.
Now the NCERT has granted permission to UP Board to publish its books for the 2021-22 session with the condition that the board ensures payment of GST for this new session and strives to clear past dues at the earliest.
“The new development has cleared the immediate hurdle of publishing books for the next academic session. The development will, however, result in a minor hike in the price of course books,” the officials say.
They share if a book is priced at Rs 50, then each year a royalty of Rs 2.50 has to be given by the board. Now on this Rs 2.5, the board would have to give an additional 5% GST which would amount to 30 paise. This may seem a small sum, but when the number of books is high, this GST amount also reaches many lakhs, they point out.
The UP Board has around 27,405 schools affiliated to it in 75 districts of the state.
These schools that includes government-run, government-aided and unaided institutions have a whopping over 12.5 million (1.25 crore) students for whom the UP Board gets the books published using private publishers.
Officials share that the royalty is actually paid by the publishers and the UP Board simply collects it from them and pays it over to the royalty holder or NCERT in this case. With GST an issue, the publishers are expected to recover this additional cost load from the consumers themselves by raising the cost of books.
However the education department officials point out that consumers or parents of the kids need not worry as this raise, if implemented, would only be minor and impact them less as already they are buying the UP Board books printed as per NCERT syllabus at much lower costs than that prescribed by the NCERT itself.
For example, one of the costliest books, that of mathematics for class 11 is priced at Rs 77 even as NCRET prescribed cost is Rs 180 while that of economics of class 9 is priced at mere Rs 11 even as NCRET prescribed cost is Rs 45, they claim.
UP Board in past two years has introduced NCERT syllabus based books for 24 subjects.
It had introduced 31 books of 18 subjects based on NCERT syllabus for students of class 9 to class 12 from 2018-19. In 2019-20 also, the Board introduced some new books based on NCERT syllabus in high school (social science) and class 12 (history, geography, civics, economics and sociology).
