Shut 5.6K ‘dilapidated’ govt schools: HC to Raj

The Rajasthan high court on Friday ordered the state government to immediately close over 5,600 government school buildings in “dilapidated condition” after a spate of building collapses over the last month led to the deaths of nine students.

- Senjuti Sengupta

A division bench of justice Mahendra Kumar Goyal and ‘Ashok Jain gave the order almost a month after the court took suo motu cognisance of a school building collapse in Jhalawar that claimed the lives of seven students.

The judgment was delivered on the basis of a preliminary report from the state education department, which identified 5,667 government school buildings and 86,934 classrooms as “completely dilapidated” during asurvey ordered by the state following the Jhalawar tragedy.

"The state government is restrained from using dilapidated school buildings/rooms, as mentioned in the report submitted by them along with reply, for studies, till further orders,” the bench said in its order. “The state government shall make suitable alternative arrangement so that studies of the affected students are not hampered.”

The court also observed that according to the Unified District Information System for Education Plus (‘UDISE’) reports, the state government allocates 6% of its budget for school infrastructure and that a substantial number of government schools lack proper buildings.