With the death of 25 more people, toll in Uttar Pradesh floods rose to 53 as many rivers continue to flow over danger mark posing threat to more than 1,500 villages thus prompting administration to call in Army to evacuate people.
Principal Secretary Revenue KS Atoria said that 53 people have died of flood in last few days with Bahraich remaining the worst affected. Army has been called in several places to assist the local administration.
Around 4 million people are affected due to the floods while Bahriach, Balrampur and Shravasti districts remained cut off from rest of the state. Flood waters had entered Balrampur town inundating a large number of low-lying localities, official said.
On Tuesday, the Higher Secondary Director informed that the entire admission procedures for Plus II course in all the new higher secondary schools and freshly allotted batches has gone haywire in the context of Monday’s High Court order. The Director said the admission procedures could restart once the Government issued a new order.
legal experts say that it is not the verdict of the High Court's single-judge bench cancelling newly allotted Plus-II batches which is affecting the students' future but it is the Government's action that has pushed them into trouble. Had the Government examined all factors involved while allotting the new batches last month, this situation would not have arisen, they say.
The Government had last month allotted more than 700 new Plus-II batches in the State out of which 86 were given the batches by overcoming the criteria. The Secretary, Public Education Department, had at that time warned the Government that this could imply legal problems. The Government had tried to justify its action even after getting this warning, legal experts point out.
A retired top official of the Education Department said that Chief Minister Oommen Chandy and Education Minister PK Abdu Rabb had got enough time to remove the schools which did not qualify to conduct Plus-II courses from the list of schools to which new batches were given but they had taken the issue lightly, probably under pressure from vested interests.
“The Government had made the new allotments very late though there was enough time for it to do this at the start of the academic year. If they had done that they could have solved possible anomalies in time. Even the Government cannot say for sure now whether the admissions could be completed smoothly this year,” the retired official said.
As the Government is preparing to file an appeal in a division bench challenging the single-judge bench’s verdict, various schools affected by its Monday order also will approach the division bench arguing that the cancellation of allotment of fresh Plus-II batches to them would lead to the denial of right to education of the students.