Sept. 17: Oommen Chandy today regretted the ?inadvertent omission? of Gujarat?s name from the national anthem printed in a Kerala textbook even as his party?s unit in the western state went ballistic against Narendra Modi.

?The mistake was not deliberate and we regret the lapse,? the Kerala chief minister said in Thiruvananthapuram, thus denying his Gujarat counterpart a reason to go ahead with his planned agitation from October 2.

Chandy even rang up the Gujarat chief minister?s office but Modi was away celebrating his birthday.

The Kerala chief minister faxed a copy of the regret note to Gujarat and sent by speed post the latest (corrected) edition of the English version of Kerala Reader Mathematics Standard IX, edited by the State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT).

Reacting to Modi?s threatened agitation, Gujarat Congress vice-president Hasmukh Patel said in Ahmedabad that the chief minister should first put his state?s textbook in order.

The Class VIII social studies book of the Gujarat Secondary and Higher Secondary Education Board, Patel claimed, shows India?s map without Kashmir. He added that the mistake was spotted four years ago but the BJP government never put it right.

?I know mistakes happen in the process of printing. But we must rectify and should not politicise the issue,? said Patel, a former vice-president of the school board that is responsible for publishing the texts.

At a rally in north Gujarat, Modi had on Thursday sought an apology from Congress chief Sonia Gandhi and the party-led Central government, failing which he threatened a mass agitation for ?Gujarat?s self-respect?.

Modi also wrote to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, urging him to act promptly.

Patel today tried to turn the tables on Modi, flashing a copy of a newspaper that carried a full-page information and broadcasting ministry advertisement of August 15, 2002, that showed India without Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Lakshadweep.

Former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and the then information and broadcasting minister should apologise for the ad carried in all national and Gujarat local dailies, Patel demanded.

Chandy?s news conference, attended by state education minister E.T. Mohammed Basheer, was called to clarify the proof-reading errors committed in 2003 and 2004.

SCERT director P.M. Jaleel told The Telegraph that the council?s governing body would soon meet to consider whether action should be taken for the lapse.

He, however, did not think that the council?s implementing officers Venugopal and S. Sankaran Nampoothiry ?who owned up to the successive slips ? had ?the cheek? to commit mischief.

Jaleel said he knew them both as they had been his MEd students.