‘Fulfil poll promise on granting affiliation to Haryana schools’

The Private School Sangh, a union representing over 5,000-odd schools in Haryana, has demanded that the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party should fulfil its poll promise to grant one-time permanent affiliation to over 1,000 schools as the future of thousands of students hangs in the balance.

The union has also sought access to the Management Information System (MIS) portal for various schools and payment of outstanding dues to private schools for granting admission to the Economically Weaker Section (EWS) students under various government schemes. An executive committee of the union is slated to meet on October 1 to discuss these and various other demands of the private schools in the State and chalk out a future course of action.

The BJP had in its 2014 Assembly election manifesto promised that after forming the government, unrecognised schools would be granted one-time permanent affiliation by easing the norms, but this promise remained unfulfilled till date, said the union’s Haryana president Satyawan Kundu.

Many of these schools have been in existence for more than three decades and fulfil all the criteria except the land required as per the norms, since buildings have come up around these schools over the years and there is no vacant space for the expansion. Mr. Kundu said more than 2.5 lakh children from poor and middle-class families were receiving education at these budget schools.

“The government has been granting temporary extension on annual basis to these schools for almost a decade, but this year the letters for annual extension are not yet received. We demand that the government must immediately issue letters for annual extension as the future of thousands of children hung in the balance and grant permanent recognition to these schools as promised,” said Mr. Kundu.

The union also raised strong objection to the Education Department’s failure to open the MIS portal for hundreds of private schools, even after several months. The Haryana Education Department had blocked access to the MIS portal, a centralised platform for various school-related activities such as admissions, transfers, student promotions, roll number allocation, and updating student records, to 2,808 schools over the past few weeks for not providing information on the seats reserved for the EWS students under the Right to Education Act. Mr. Kundu blamed the situation on the “communication gap” between the school authorities and the Education Department, seeking immediate access to the MIS portal for these schools.

“Also, the government is yet to pay around ₹300 crore in the outstanding dues to private schools for admission to students of EWS category under rule 134A in Haryana School Education Rules, 2003, which was scrapped in 2022. The dues for admission to poor students under the CHEERAG scheme and RTE Act are not paid by the government,” said Mr. Kundu.

Repeated calls and text messages to Haryana Education Minister Mahipal Dhanda to seek his response went unanswered.