Cuttack, May 28: Orissa High Court has imposed restrictions on publishing, distribution and circulation of a modified version of Barnabodha, the 120-year-old Odia primer, by the state-run Odia Bhasa Pratisthan (OBP).

The court imposed the restrictions in response to public interest litigations alleging “distortion and desecration” of the original Barnabodha in the modified version that the OBP had printed recently.

“The Barnabodha published by Odia Bhasa Pratisthan is an affront on the monument of Odia language written by Bhaktakabi Madhusudan Rao. The state government should immediately withdraw the book to scotch any controversy and prevent any legal battle over it,” Utkal Sahitya Samaj president Bijayananda Singh told The Telegraph.

Singh said the original Barnabodha was written and published by Madhusudan Rao in 1895. After Rao published the eighth edition in 1901, publishing house Macmillan had it reprinted later.

The OBP has printed 1.05 lakh copies of Barnabodha for free distribution of two copies for each primary school across the state.

Noted Odia litterateurs Binapani Mohanty, 81, and Raghunath Mohapatra, 75, had filed a PIL alleging that the OBP had published “a twisted version” of Barnabodha by “doing away with the use of yuktaksharas (a combination of more than one letter)” and depicting it “in a wrong, ugly and badly chopped up manner”. In the process the sanctity of Odia language, which was accorded classical status recently, had been “distorted and desecrated”, the PIL alleged.