92 Rohtak schools get closure notice

Ravinder Saini

Tribune News Service

Rohtak, July 13

The district education authorities have served a closure notice on 92 private schools being run without affiliation. The school operators have been asked to shut down their institutions with immediate effect to avoid any police action in case of non-compliance of the directive. Many of the schools are operating for the past over two decades.

The directive has caused a flutter among the school owners who have demanded relaxation in the rules for getting affiliation. They say the decision will adversely affect the future of a number of students.

Sources said that the action was taken on the orders of the Punjab and Haryana High Court issued on March 18. “Your school is being run in violation of the Haryana School Education Rules: 2003. Hence, you are directed to close down your school with immediate effect, otherwise an FIR will be lodged against you,” reads the notice.

“The BJP had before the 2014 Assembly elections promised us to make easier the rules for getting affiliation to run a private school but nothing has been done in the past five years,” said Ravinder Nandal, district president, Haryana Private School Association (HPSA).

Nandal said that many of the 92 schools in the district had already applied for affiliation but their files were biting dust in the office of the Education Department. In this situation, they should not be held responsible for any rule violation. Many schools being run for the past three decades were also facing closure, he added.

An Education Department officer said that the closure notice had been served on the direction of the High Court, and the school owners were deliberately playing the blame game to hide their fault.