Publishers, coaching institutes to pay 'royalty charges' to Balbharati

As per the new policy by the state government's education department, it won't be easy for private publishers to reproduce Balbharati's content without obtaining the required licence

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Private publishers as well as coaching institutes will now have to pay royalty charges to Balbharati - the state textbook bureau - for reproducing its content in resource materials or supplementary notes. These charges will range from Rs 35,000 to Rs 63,000 per year per book, depending on format of reproduction - print or digital.

As per the new policy by the state government's education department, it won't be easy for private publishers to reproduce Balbharati's content without obtaining the required licence. Balbharati has formulated a non-exclusive, revocable, non-transferable licence to be granted to authorised users in relation to its contents, under the terms of a Licensing Agreement or policy.

Apart from authorised users, no other agencies/companies/entities are allowed to reproduce Balbharati content in any form, otherwise legal action will be taken against them. There will be a thorough procedure that all private publishers will have to follow to obtain the license which will be valid only for a period of one year.

Director of Balbharati, Sunil Magar, said, "Private publishers as well as coaching institutes have been gaining commercially by producing resource material on Balbharati content. The process is now being streamlined to avoid any unfair means."

Shocked by the move, private publishers and coaching institutes called it unfair. "We are hearing of such a policy for the first time in so many years of business. They are producing textbooks, supporting study material will obviously be based on them. How can they question it as plagiarism?" said Narendra Nandu, President of Bombay Booksellers and Publishers' Association which had requested state government to include their representative on the committee.

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