The Jammu and Kashmir government on Saturday banned two books allegedly glorifying separatism, blacklisted their authors and suspended eight officials, including a principal, for approving their procurement.

The development followed outrage by organisations and parties, including the BJP, that labelled the government's procurement of the books for school libraries as "academic jihad". The backlash sparked a frantic response from the government’s education department, which comes under chief minister Omar Abdullah’s administration.

One of these books, Personalities and Legends of Jammu and Kashmir, was published in 2017 by Jammu-based Oberoi Book Service and authored by Hilal Ahmad and Santosh Meena. The other book is Great Personalities of Jammu and Kashmir, authored by Dr Sushant Giri and published by Delhi-based Anurag Prakashan. Both were procured under the centrally sponsored Samagra Shiksha programme.

Book bans are part of the government's crackdown on dissent, which saw it order the forfeiture of 25 titles last year, citing threats of radicalisation and glorification of terrorism.

Among the books forfeited last year were Arundhati Roy’s Azadi, Sumantra Bose’s Kashmir at the Crossroads and Contested Lands, A.G. Noorani’s The Kashmir Dispute 1947-2012, Anuradha Bhasin’s A dismantled State (The Untold Story of Kashmir after Article 370), David Devadas’s In Search of a Future (The Story of Kashmir), and Hafsa Kanjwal’s Colonising Kashmir: State-Building under Indian Occupation.

The latest order issued by the education department said the authors and publishers of the two books were “banned and blacklisted, henceforth, in the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir.”

“Furthermore, any printed material authored and/or published by them shall also be withdrawn," it added.

The department said it had procured 463 books submitted by 364 publishers this year under the central scheme, of which two were found to contain “highly inappropriate content”. In all, 250 copies of the two books were supplied to Jammu, Ramban, Udhampur and Baramulla districts.

The order said it was “quite evident” that the officials involved in approving the books were involved in “serious negligence”, “dereliction of duty” and “lack of proper due diligence” as they contained content related to separatism, which has a “potential for creating law and order situation”.

The government said a high-level probe has been ordered into the matter.