Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati, on Sunday, reacted strongly to the proposed closure of some basic and primary schools and their subsequent merger.

The former chief minister of Uttar Pradesh said, “The decision of the UP government to close and merge the 27,764 council primary and upper primary schools with less than 50 students and merge them with other schools instead of taking necessary measures to improve them by making necessary improvements is not right. In such a situation, where and how will the poor children study?' The decision to close schools is also unfair.”

The BSP supremo said, “In UP and most of the states of the country, especially primary and secondary education is in a very bad condition, due to which crores of children from poor families are constantly deprived of education, let alone good education. The decision of the Odisha government to close schools with less students is also unfair.”

She said, “The result of such anti-poor and anti-people policies of the government is that people are being forced to educate their children in private schools, as is clear from the survey, but it is not right to close these schools instead of making necessary improvements by giving proper money and attention to education by the government.”

It may be mentioned that there are 27,764 primary and upper primary schools in Uttar Pradesh where there are less than 50 students. There is a plan to merge these schools with other schools. They will be merged with other schools of the panchayat or nearby schools. Instructions have been given to merge these schools for the next academic session i.e. the 2025-26 session. For this, instructions have been issued to the basic education officers of all the districts.

The instructions say that a report should be prepared to find out which nearby school it would be better to merge with. How much distance will the students have to cover to go to those schools? For this, a detailed report is being prepared keeping in mind many issues.