SHIMLA: Himachal Pradesh government has closed 90 government schools with less admission and issued a notification to denotify them on Saturday.
These include 36 senior secondary schools, 34 high schools and 20 middle schools. According to the notification the denotified middle schools had less than 15 students, high schools had less than 20 students and senior secondary schools had less than 25 students due to which they have been closed.
In the notification issued, secretary (education) Abhishek Jain said that decision to denotify these schools was taken in view of administrative reasons of very low students strength of below 15 for government middle schools, 20 for government high schools and 25 for government senior secondary schools as on March 31 for winter closing schools and April 15 for summer closing schools which were upgraded after April 1 last year.
After the closure of these schools, the staff posted in them will be shifted to other schools. The department will issue a separate order regarding this.
Most of these schools were opened by the previous BJP government in the last six months of the election year. After coming to power the chief minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu led government had announced to close down the institutions opened right before the assembly election to gain political mileage.
When the first session of 14th Assembly was held in Dharamshala in January this year, the opposition BJP had accused the Congress government of working under vendetta by closing the institutions opened by the previous BJP government during the last year of its rule. Leader of Opposition Jai Ram Thakur had said that in the history of Himachal Pradesh never such action under vendetta was taken.
While defending the decision to close such institutions, Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu had said that Jai Ram Thakur remained chief minister for 5 years but in the last nine months of his rule around 900 institutions were opened in the state. He said that despite opening these institutions people of state voted BJP out of power. He said that his government will open institutions where they will be required and that too after ensuring the recruitment of required staff.
