The girl students in Haryana’s Karsola village in Jind continued their hunger strike on Tuesday demanding upgrade of their village school to senior secondary level.
A day before, the students had locked the gate of the Karsola Government High School and launched their protest outside it along with villagers. While few girls were admitted to the hospital after their health deteriorated due to the hunger strike on Tuesday, the State Government has made it clear that no more schools would be upgraded during this academic session in Haryana.
“At present, the village school is only till Class X. For Class XII, the students have to go to schools in Jind and Rohtak, which are far away from the village. This has resulted in girl students dropping out,” said Karsola village sarpanch Rajpal.
He said several requests were made to the Government to upgrade the school but nothing had been done so far.
The incident comes days after students in Rewari held a protest over a similar demand. On May 10 in Rewari’s Gothda Tappa Dahina village, around 80 girls of a state-run high school went on an indefinite strike demanding their institution be upgraded, alleging that were being harassed while commuting for higher studies to a senior secondary school in a different village. The State Government had last week accepted their demand and had issued a notification to upgrade the village school.
In the past one week, such protests have been witnessed in several villages of Gurugram, Palwal, Jind and Rewari districts of the state. Meanwhile, PK Das, Additional Chief Secretary, Haryana School Education Department, has said that the school upgradation process for current academic session 2017-18 has been completed and no more schools will be upgraded.