Cracker ban irks students

Highlights

BC welfare school students stage protest, disrupt traffic on NH-65

♦ Revenge tactics by students for banning crackers, says principal

♦‘Principal is over cautious’, says RR Collector on cracker ban

Hyderabad: The sit-in protest by some students of the BC Welfare School in Batasingaram of Ranga Reddy district on NH 65 on Friday brought to light many surprising issues apart from the well-known issue of poor infrastructure facilities in these schools.

These students were reportedly prevented from celebrating Diwali by the school authorities.

Principal of the school Narayana Reddy told Hans India that a bunch of disgruntled students of class 8-12 engineered the protest on Friday as he had put some strict disciplinary measures in place in the school campus.

This included ban on bursting of crackers on the campus by students on Diwali. His argument was that bursting crackers was not permitted in any of the BC Residential Welfare Schools in the state. He said that some students violated this and fearing action resorted to sit-in protest.

When asked how bursting crackers could banned in a residential campus, the principal said, “There is safety of children involved since the residential schools have students from Class VI to XII.”

Interestingly, the version of the principal has not been supported by the Ranga Reddy District Collector whose name is also Narayana Reddy.

He told Hans India that there was no such ban on bursting of crackers in these schools.

He said, “May be principal was over cautious.” The Collector said bursting crackers could have been allowed by taking proper safety measures as we take in the case of our children. He said that corrective measures would be taken to prevent the recurrence of such incidents.

The protest of students brought the traffic to grinding halt on the NH 65 and commuters stopped their vehicles, met the children and inquired the reason for their sit-in protest. The students said the main reason for their protest was lack of quality food served in the hostel, shabby classrooms, unhygienic washrooms and a lack of security among others.

They said many fell sick due to half cooked food served to them, lack of study material and crammed classrooms in a school of 1,000 students.

They said they not only brought the issue to the teachers, wardens and the principal but no one had done anything to resolve their woes.

A protesting student said: “All our complaints have gone in vain, and nothing has changed.”

He said they want spacious classrooms, sufficient study material, clean washrooms, proper food and other facilities.

Academic year is coming to an end in the next couple of months and still they have not been given proper study material. The school does not even have a security guard, they added.