A CORRESPONDENT
LAKHIMPUR: In the wake of the declaration made by State Education Minister Dr. Himanta Biswa Sarma at a press meet organized on August 1 regarding the exclusion of 105 non-provincialized Higher Secondary Schools out of 114 from the process of provincialization, the reaction against the issue continues in Lakhimpur district.
In this regard, the aggrieved teachers of these non-provincialized schools directly blamed the Commissioner and Secretary of the Department of Elementary Education, Preetam Saikia, SEBA chairman Ramesh Chandra Jain and Director of Secondary Education, Phanindra Jidung. In support of this, Sanjib Borah, the secretary of the Lakhimpur unit of Assam Non-provincialized Higher Secondary School Association, alleged that the 105 non-provincialized Higher Secondary Schools were deprived of provincialization only due to the stand of these three high-level officers. They lamented that the activities of the District and State-level Screening Committees were not taken into consideration. Notably, the District and State-level Screening Committees were constituted in order to screen the fact whether the HS Schools concerned were eligible for the provincialization or not.
The secretary of the organization added that the unexpected situation came up because the Assam Higher Secondary Education Council (AHSEC) had failed to verify sincerely the lists of the students enrolled in the non-provincialized HS Schools and their results were sent to the council after the screening of the District and State-level Committees.
Notably, the students of the non-provincialized HS Schools have to appear for the exams in the centres of other provincialized HS Schools. These students are known as institutional private students. Though the registration of these students was done against the name of their own schools till 2014-15, the AHSEC instructed to register these students against the name of the HS School where the exam centre is located. Since then the figure of the number of these students and their results have been attached to the schools having the exam centres. The aggrieved teachers of the non-provincialized schools have once again demanded the intervention of the Education Minister in order to save their schools from being deprived of provincialization despite their eligibility.