The controversy surrounding procuring books for the Periyar Arivulagam | Explained

The story so far: A veritable pandora’s box of literary and political controversy was opened on November 6, 2026, when Sahitya Akademi winner Perumal Murugan wrote about several irregularities in the procurement of books for the newly-inaugurated Periyar Arivulagam library in Coimbatore. He wrote, and later spoke online, about how thousands of exorbitantly-priced books had been procured for the library with questionable authorship, full of factual errors and were seemingly AI generated.

He also pointed out that these books had been procured at inflated rates, many times higher than current market rates for similar publications. It has since caused a furore in Tamil Nadu, as the case heads into a Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption inquiry, court intervention and the scope of investigations has now explanded to include inventories in several other libraries, and it has also started an intense political blame game with the prime actors being the ruling Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) and its predecessor, now in the Opposition, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam.