Private schools in Uttarakhand following non-NCERT books may lose no-objection certificates

Warning strict action against private schools in Uttarakhand prescribing non-NCERT books, the director general of primary education department has said it may even lead to cancellation of their no-objection certificates (NOCs).

On Thursday, the department served notices to 186 private schools of the state affiliated to Central Board for Secondary Education (CBSE) in this regard. The state government had taken a decision earlier this year to make books by National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) compulsory for all private CBSE schools of the state. This decision was also backed by the high court in April.

Alok Shekhar Tiwari, director general of primary education, said: “This matter will not be taken lightly. We have issued notices to these schools and have sought their reply. The schools have acted against the high court verdict, which is contempt of court and we will bring this to the court’s notice.

We will also seek the court’s guidelines on further action. If the court so instructs, we will withdraw the NOCs of these schools and will register an FIR against them as well.”

CBSE grants affiliation to a school only if it has an NOC by the state government. Tiwari said the department cannot proceed in the matter independently as it is sub-judice.

In its judgment, the court had said that if a school is prescribing books from private publishers, they should be at par with the NCERT books in terms of quality and cost. Schools cannot prescribe books from private publishers which cost more than NCERT books.

After receiving several complaints from the parents, education minister Arvind Pandey constituted nodal officers in Dehradun, Haridwar, Nainital and Udham Singh Nagar to survey all the private schools in their respective districts and identify the defaulters.

The officers found 186 out of 226 private schools in violation of the high court order.

“The schools have been trying to defend themselves by saying that the books by private publishers are for their library but it is baseless. If these books are for the library, then why have the parents been made to buy them in addition to the NCERT books? This has led to extra financial burden on the parents,” Tiwari said.

Deputy director, primary education, Jitendra Saxena, said: “We have served notices to these schools on the basis of nine points. The schools are supposed to display the rates of the books on their websites but most of them have not done so. Many don’t even have a website.”

First Published: Sep 15, 2018 01:10 IST