It’s Telangana bandh after vacations

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Hyderabad: It’s back to school for students from Wednesday after a two-month break for summer vacation. The new academic year (2013-14) for schools will commence from June 12.
Ironically, city schools will face a ‘bandh’ within two days of the start of the new academic session. This bandh has been called by the Telangana Joint Action Committee  by announcing “Chalo Assembly” on June 14 and summoning thousands of T-supporters to the city.
Anticipating law and order problems, the school managements have decided to declare a holiday for schools on June 14. With the election year beginning as well, managements and parents are apprehensive that the  T-agitation could flare up again, causing disruption of academic activities in the new academic year as it did in the past.
The managements  of private schools and parents’ associations have long been demanding that the state government bring education under the Essential Services Maintenance Act (Esma) like departments of finance, power, transport etc.
School children, they say, are not “decision makers” on political issues  and so  should be exempted from bandhs. They say city schools are already lagging behind in SSC results among all the districts of the state, with Hyderabad standing at the bottom of the SSC results table since 2010, due to frequent disruption of academic activities.
“Various political parties and students’ organisations have been calling for bandhs on different days over the same issues. This has been causing problems for students and their parents. We are not in a position to take a decision till the last minute whether to declare a holiday or not due to the frequent bandh calls.
We demand that the government bring schools under Esma and provide adequate police protection to run the schools during bandhs,” said Sreenivas Reddy, convenor, AP Recognised Private Schools’ Management Association.
The association had even approached the AP High Court over the issue in 2011 and the court issued directions to the government in 2012 to ensure smooth functioning of schools on bandh days.“School children should not be made part of political agitations. We appeal to all the political parties to exempt schools from bandhs,” said Subramanyam of Hyderabad Schools’ Parents’ Association.