Former president of the All Odisha Secondary Schools Employees’ Association Krushna Charan Panigrahy in a statement has alleged that the Commissioner of the School and Mass Education (SME) Department was arbitrarily rejecting the grant-in-aid (GIA) claims of some high schools. Panigrahy pointed out that more than 100 high schools though have obtained orders from the Odisha High Court and the State Education Tribunal in their favour to get GIA as per the GIA Rules, 1994, but the Commissioner instead of implementing the orders preferred an appeal before the Supreme Court on the plea that the roll strength and the result as well as performance of the concerned schools were not taken into account by the courts while passing orders in favour of them for releasing GIA.
Notably, Panigrahy said the SME Department had never taken into consideration both qualitative and quantitative assessment of the schools at the time of releasing GIA as per the prevailing GIA rules. The Commissioner while justifying his action of not implementing the court orders reportedly cited the different criteria and guidelines to make a school eligible for getting GIA as stated in Department notification No. 4760, dated March 17, 1979 which was effective from March 1, 1979. Pangrahy said that though the same notification was subsequently cancelled by SME Department vide its notification No. 40045 dated September 23,1981 superseding the earlier order, there was no justification to stick to them. Since the later order clearly says the qualitative and quantitative performance assessments of the schools are not to be made the basis for releasing GIA, the Commissioner’s stand was arbitrary, Panigrahi said.
Panigrahi further said that the ground of rejection of the orders of the judicial institutions and making an appeal before higher judicial forum spending huge money from State exchequer is baseless. He further claimed that the Odisha Education Amendment Act 1994 clearly says in its section 06-B (f) and 07-D (ii) that schools obtaining 50 per cent of the results are eligible not only to renew its recognition, but also to get GIA.