Students check out textbooks at the fair’s NCERT stall at Gandhi Maidan in Patna on Sunday. Picture by Ranjeet Kumar Dey

Patna, Nov. 13: The Jawaharlal Nehru National Exhibition for Science and Environmental Education for Children, a part of the national book fair in the state capital, is drawing schoolchildren in hordes. The interest factor is not the amazing models and projects on display at the exhibition but the textbook stock at the NCERT stall, which, children claim, is not available at the bookstores in the city.

No surprises then, the NCERT stall remains crowded at all times of the day. Students at the fair said this exhibition has come as a big relief for them as they can find all NCERT textbooks, which are generally unavailable in the market. NCERT textbooks are recommended by most CBSE and government schools and also by different coaching centres which prepare students for competitive exams like medical entrance test, IIT-JEE and state civil services.

NCERT marketing officer Amitabh Kumar admitted there had been an unprecedented demand for textbooks at the exhibition. “Books worth over Rs 12,000 were sold on the first day of the exhibition despite the event starting around 4.30pm,” he told The Telegraph.

Kumar, however, refused to accept there was any dearth of NCERT textbooks in the market. “People spread rumours on the unavailability of NCERT books at stores. We always ensure that our distributors have enough stock of textbooks all the time,” Kumar said.

Children differed, though. They complained they have to run all around the city in search of important NCERT textbooks.

Avinash Kumar, a Class VII student of St Xavier’s High School, said: “Today, I came to the exhibition in search of a textbook on Indian history. My school session started in April this year but I could not find a copy of NCERT’s book on Indian history. I looked for it at all premier bookstores in the city only to be disappointed. Thankfully, today I found one at the exhibition.”

Kumar said his studies suffered a lot as his teachers prescribed the book and he could not find it on time.

“Yes, this is a general problem with the NCERT textbooks. One or the other textbook is out of stock most of the times. Even now, we don’t have the full series of history books of NCERT for classes XI and XII,” said Firoz Akhtar, owner of Hind Book shop on Ashok Rajpath.

While the demand for NCERT textbooks is peaking with each passing day at the book fair, several newly released biographies of eminent persons have failed to attract buyers. One such biography is of social activist Anna Hazare titled Kranti Doot, written by Sudharshan Bhatia and published by Diamond Publisher.

“People still prefer to go for the autobiography of Mahatma Gandhi rather than the biographies of Gandhians. Mahatma’s autobiography, published by Navjivan Press, Ahmedabad, is still in demand, as is the literature on Swami Vivekananda,” said Rajesh Kumar Sharma, an official of Prabhat Prakashan.

At the Sahitya Akademi stall, books by writers Nagarjuna, Amrit Lal Nagar, Mahadevi Verma are much in demand.

The book fair will continue till November 19. The science exhibition will conclude on November 16.