Two principals ‘targeted’ for students protests
The Principals of SP Model Higher Secondary School (HSS) and MP model HSS in Srinagar have become the soft targets of the prevailing situation wherein the student protests witnessed a spike from past month post thrashing of students by Police in Pulwama Degree College, leaving over 50 students injured.
There is no let-up in the student protest since April 15 when forces barged inside the premises of Pulwama Degree College and thrashed the students, evoking widespread student protests across Kashmir.
The prolonged student protest has kept the government on tenter hooks as the officials have been responding to the ongoing situation by shutting down some elective schools and colleges as a means to calm the situation, which however has not proven fruitful given the continuous protests.
Post April 15 incident, the J&K government responded to the situation by suspending class work in MP and SP HSS in Srinagar for a prolonged period of time as a “precautionary measure to avoid student protest.” However, the move didn’t yield positive results given the continuous student protest in various parts of Kashmir.
Meanwhile, the school education department has made the principals of these two government schools a soft target of the situation by issuing transfer orders from their present place of posting and directed the two female Principals to “report to Directorate of School Education (DSEK)” till further orders.
In an order issued by the School Education Department on May 12, five Principals and equivalent officers have been transferred from their present place of postings out of which three have been shifted to alternate postings while as Principal MP HSS and SP HSS Srinagar have been asked to report to DSEK.
The officials however said the transfer order was a “verbal punishment” for the two principals who were blamed by higher authorities for not controlling the student protests.
“The irony is that the government has itself failed to reach out to students and slow down the anger but surprisingly they punished school Principals. Even police fails to control the protests despite being the law enforcement agency but the department blamed these two Principals,” the officials said.
KV Correspondent
