Orissa High Court quashes school merger plan

CUTTACK:  The Orissa High Court on Tuesday quashed the notification issued by the School and Mass Education department for merger of schools on March 11, 2020. The judgment comes at a time when around 4,500 schools from among the nearly 16,000 identified for amalgamation have already been merged.

The single judge bench of Justice BR Sarangi quashed the March 11, 2020 notification while allowing a batch of 168 petitions.  Justice Sarangi directed the department to restore the position of the schools in question as before and provide necessary infrastructure for smooth running of the same.

“Instead of finding the reasons for decreasing roll strength, merger of school will not serve the purpose. It is just like without finding the cause of disease, treatment has been started. There are innumerable reasons for decreasing of roll strength. Instead of eradicating the ground difficulties, merger has taken place due to decision taken at higher level without realising the ground level reality”, Justice Sarangi observed.

Faced with the huge setback, official sources said the department will move the Supreme Court against the judgment. The ruling came on petitions that had challenged the merger notification on the ground that it violated the Odisha Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Rules, 2010. The petitioners had pointed out that clause (a) of sub-rule 1 of Rule-6 prescribed that a school teaching students of Class I to V has to be established within a walking distance of 1 km of the neighbourhood.

HC quashes school merger plan

The Court endorsed the contention of the petitioners that the decision to merge government primary schools with UP schools is highly arbitrary as that would put the small children into great difficulty. 
As per the notification, schools with students less than 40 were to be merged with bigger nearby schools known as lead schools. As per the plan, integration of primary, UP and high schools with the nearby bigger schools will ensure fully functional schools with increase in number of teachers per class and concentrated investment of resources, it stated.