Enhanced school fee leaves parents shell-shocked

The month of June may bring down temperatures a bit but it certainly raises the heartbeat of parents with exorbitant school fee bills staring at them.

And the worry of the parents is that the fee enhancement goes unabated despite the parents making it a huge issue and the Government expressing concern.

This year too was no exception and parents received text messages of increased fee ranging from 10 % to 20% on the last year’s fee structure. The schools did not even care for any explanation on why the fee was increased when parents confronted them.

Even as the agitated parents could do nothing but pay the fee, they wonder what happened to the year-long exercise done by the Prof. Tirupati Rao Committee on the issue.

The Government is yet to take a decision on it or come out with a fee policy despite the Deputy Chief Minister himself agreeing several times that fee enhancement was unreasonable and promising control measures.

The election of upa-sarpanch, which was inconsequential in the past, might see heavy competition in the coming elections to gram panchayats.

The reason:

Upa-sarpanches have been given cheque signing authority along with the sarpanches in the expenditure of gram panchayats.

Earlier, the sarpanches and panchayat secretaries used to be the signatories on cheques but the government apparently believed that it was better to ease out secretaries to check corruption.

Whatever be the government intentions, the question is whether the issue of cheques will make forward movement to the treasury if the sarpanches and upa-sarpanches belonged to different parties.

It is also possible that the election of upa-sarpanches, which is by show of hands in a meeting of the elected body of gram panchayats, might see stiff competition because the post is not reserved.

Those who aspired to be sarpanches but could not make it as they did not fit into the reserved category will run for the post, thanks to the ‘cheque power’.

Imagine nine persons keeping a hawkish eye on a teenager who took SSC supplementary exam in Kodad town last week. Two candidates who had failed in Hindi subject in the regular exams earlier this year applied to take the supplementary exam but only one of them turned up at the centre on the scheduled date.

As per the protocol, posted at the centre were its Chief Superintendent, a departmental officer, a member of the anti-copying squad, an invigilator, a clerk, an auxiliary nursing midwife, an attender and two police constables. All of them must have heaved a sigh of relief when he left the portals of the centre.

With the elections to the Legislative Assembly less than a year away, the fortunes of a large number of sitting legislators as well as those waiting for an opportunity to contest on behalf of the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) are swinging heavily.

As if the results of the recent quarterly internal survey of the ruling party on the performance of its legislators are not enough, continued migration of leaders from other parties into TRS seems to be unsettling the leaders who are already enjoying posts.

Although party insiders say they are not sure about the number of legislators in the danger zone, reports doing rounds in the media circles indicate that 39 out of an effective party strength of 88 are facing rough weather in their constituencies.

Of those 39, 17 were elected on TRS tickets and the remaining are those switched over from other parties. The Saturday’s admission of an Member of Legislative Council and two former Congress legislators from combined Mahabubnagar is expected to give further jitters to party leaders in that area.

(R. Ravikanth Reddy, Nikhila Henry, N. Rahul, and B. Chandrashekhar)