-Mita Mukherjee

The West Bengal government is in favour of reopening schools and colleges in the state but before taking a decision in this regard it aims to vaccinate at least 85 percent of students, state advocate general SN Mukherjee informed the Calcutta High Court on Friday.

He sought at least one week’s time before taking an appropriate decision and placing its plans before the court on the record.  

Hearing four Public Interest Litigation petitions seeking reopening of schools, a Bench headed by Chief Justice Prakash Srivastava today directed the state government to place its stand on record regarding resuming in-person classes in educational institutions. The next date of hearing is slated on February 14. The court asked the government to take a positive decision in this regard before the next hearing takes place.

Senior advocate Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya appearing for one of the petitioners submitted before the court that students were being adversely affected because of the closure of schools and colleges and it was high time that the institutions reopened for conducting offline teaching maintaining the Covid-19 protocols.

When the government has granted permission to run all other activities, it should also allow the schools to conduct offline classes, he said.

It was also brought to the notice of the court that a large number of students were quitting studies and the rate of dropout has increased to a considerable extent in the state due to the closure of schools.

The advocate general argued that the state government wanted to ensure the safety of all the stakeholders including students, parents, teachers and non-teaching staff for which it has to be careful before taking the final decision on reopening the educational institutions.

Meanwhile, agitations demanding resuming physical classes were organized at several places across the state on Friday.

The teachers of state-aided Rabindra Bharati University staged a demonstration at its BT Road campus demanding reopening of the university in compliance with the Covid-19 norms.

The students and parents of a school in Durgapur, 150 km away from Kolkata held a demonstration in front of the school demanding reopening of the institution.

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