History
A committee led by J. P. L. Gwynn was formed by the Andhra Pradesh government to "modernize" Telugu and make it the primary medium for administration and education in 1966 in light of the central government's decision to promote regional languages in the same fields. Based on the committee's recommendation and the central government's scheme, the state government created the Telugu Academy as a government institute for promoting Telugu in 1968.[1] P. V. Narasimha Rao started chairing the Academy the same year, possibly being the inaugural holder of the role.[2][3]
According to current chairperson Lakshmi Parvathi, the institute printed only Telugu books until the 1998-99 school year, where it diversified into publishing maths, science and English textbooks as well.[4]
Post bifurcation (2014-present)
After the separation of Telangana, the Academy entered a state of limbo as although AP set up the institute and has regional centres throughout the state, the main office in Hyderabad was located in Telangana and it took responsibility for funding its operations. During this period, its activities were significantly slowed down. A court agreement was reached giving AP and TS a 58-42 split of the Academy's assets, and AP decided to rename its academy to "AP Telugu Sanskrit Akademi" and reestablish it in Tirupati.[5] The latter decision caused some objection from opposition parties and figures, who claimed that signified a reduction in the status of Telugu and that the Academy was already underfunded and would now have to make its budget stretch even further, while officials defended the change by pointing to the use of Sanskrit for technical vocabulary in Telugu.[4][6] Member of parliament G. V. L. Narasimha Rao and actor-cum-politician Pawan Kalyan proposed that a separate Sanskrit academy should be set up instead.[4][7]
In 2019, the Academy was criticized for a 2016 book on the Telangana movement which had a significant number of factual and writing errors as well as contentious statements.[8] Six months later, the Academy announced a panel to review and correct the issues.[9]
As part of the bifurcation, the Academy's assets were audited. It was found in 2021 that staff at a credit society where the institution had fixed deposits had embezzled ₹60 crore (600 million) from the deposited funds.[10]