Taken down, loudspeakers now find their way to schools in NCR

NOIDA: Schools have become the unlikely beneficiaries of the state government's campaign in April to take down loudspeakers installed without permission at various public places and sites of worship.
The owners of some of these loudspeakers have over the past few weeks donated the devices to educational campuses that operate on tight budgets, cajoled by the police, which has been playing the role of a "facilitator". So far, loudspeakers have been handed over to the authorities of 70 schools in NCR (13 in Noida, 57 in Ghaziabad).
A committee member of a mosque in Noida Sector 9 told TOI they had to remove two loudspeakers after the sound levels were found to be breaching the decibel limit. “They were of no use to us. We were asked if we would like to donate the excess loudspeakers to government schools in the area. We agreed. After all, this was a noble initiative. Our loudspeakers were given to the Junior Government School in Harola,” Salman Khurshid said.
In the latter half of April, the volume of 60,000 loudspeakers was lowered across the state and another 54,000 were taken down from public places and sites of worship to meet the Noise Pollution Rules, 2000. Chief minister Yogi Adityanath had sent specific instructions to ensure a loudspeaker was not heard beyond the compound it was installed in. According to the UP government’s norms, the permissible decibel limit in industrial areas is 75 dBA during the day and 70 dBA at night. In commercial hubs, it is 65 dBA during the day and 55 dBA at night. In residential areas, the noise level should not exceed 55 dBA in the day and 45 dBA at night.
In Noida and Ghaziabad, a total of 358 loudspeakers were taken down in April. These devices were, however, not seized. They were either locked in storerooms or donated to educational institutions in dire need of them but without the resources to buy one.
“Wherever loudspeakers were taken down, our officers asked the authorities if they would like to donate them to schools. They also got them introduced to the principals and facilitated the handover,” said Meenakshi Katyayan, the deputy commissioner of police in Greater Noida. Anita Chauhan, the principal of the Harola school that got loudspeakers from the Sector 9 mosque, said they did not have the funds to buy one. “The loudspeakers that we got help us hold assemblies in the open and even make important announcements. We had a resource crunch and couldn't buy a microphone system for the students,” she said.
In Ghaziabad, 57 government schools and some colleges have received the speakers. Iraj Raja, the SP (rural), said several schools had approached them with requests for the devices to hold morning assembly prayers and other cultural programmes. “A few school representatives had approached us after learning about the drive to take down excess loudspeakers from places of worship and other public institutions,” the officer added.
Raja said schools, especially in rural areas, would need these mikes to make announcements about midday meals and raise awareness among villagers to send the children to school.
In villages, schools are also used to host various government programmes. An official of a primary school at Dehat in the Muradnagar area, which received a donated loudspeaker, said the school's own sound system had been malfunctioning, and since the pandemic struck, resources dried up further, forcing them to function without one. "Because of the financial crunch, we were just not able to afford one," the official said.