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Headmistress shuts school for her son’s marriage celebrations
The Government High School, Bhagla was asked to take the day off for the marriage of the headmistress Syeda Anjum’s son. The sarpanch informed the state Education Minister Naeem Akhtar who ordered an inquiry and suspended the entire school staff.
In one of the most profligate examples of running schools as their personal fiefdoms, a headmistress declared a holiday in her school in the remote Bhagla village in Doda district in lieu of the marriage celebrations of her son.
The Government High School, Bhagla has 300 students who were simply asked to take the day off as it was the marriage of the headmistress Syeda Anjum’s son. A dubious handwritten notice was also pasted on the school walls saying "the school shall remain closed on May 3 due to the marriage ceremony of Tauseef Ahmad of this institution".
The dubious nature of the announcement came to the fore when upon closer examination by Bhupinder Kumar, district development commissioner of Doda it came to light that there was no signature on the notice. In fact, no one is aware about the whereabouts of the person who pasted it. Without a signature, it will be difficult to attribute it to a particular person. However, upon not finding a particular person to blame, it was deemed to be sufficient grounds to suspend the staff.
When the sarpanch of the village came to know about the aforementioned notice he called up the state Education Minister Naeem Akhtar who ordered an inquiry.
"We have placed the entire staff of Government High School, Bhagla in Bharat area of the district under suspension as they declared a holiday on Tuesday to celebrate the wedding of the son of the headmaster of the school," Director Education, Jammu, Samita Sethi, said.
"As soon as we got the information, we conducted an inquiry and senior officials of the education department were sent to the school the same day. They found the school closed and the notice declaring the holiday," Sethi said.
A preliminary inquiry found that the headmistress and the staff, including teachers and those in the administration, guilty of having remained "unauthorisedly" absent from their office duty, after which they were suspended.
"After the inquiry, strict action would be taken against the erring staff members for putting the future of over 300 students at stake. They will be chargesheeted and action will be taken as per the law," Sethi said.