Maha govt closes down Balchitrawani with immediate effect

The Maharashtra state institute of education technology, popularly known as Balchitrawani, which developed educational programmes, has been closed down from today.
A Government Resolution (GR) was issued in this regard today and it came into immediate effect.
The institute will be replaced with e-balchitrawani where digital content will be created. It will develop virtual classrooms and audio-visual textbook lessons on a specially designed webportal for Classes I to XII of the state board, the GR said.
Started on January 27, 1984 the institute had developed some 6,000 learning programmes for education.
Till December 2002, it was completely funded by the union government. After the centre asked the state its opinion on bearing entire expenditure of running the institute, the state government on January 14, 2003 expressed its inability to bear the expenses of the Balchitrawani, it said.

Later, in 2012 Doordarshan decided to charge for telecasting audio-video programmes of Balchitrawani and the latter maintained that it lacks funds to meet the demand, it said.

Since then, the institute's programmes were stopped and subsequently production too came to a halt.
The state government since then was mulling over changing the face of Balchitrawani as over a period of time, many state and private schools have gone digital.
These schools already have a lot of online content and hence it was irrelevant to have an institute like Balchitrawani, it said.
Now the form of Balchitrawani will change and it will remain active in a different form, the GR stated.

The salaries of the existing staff and pending dues have been already settled; hence the state decided to close down the institute with immediate effect, the GR added.