Shamim, an advocate from Birbhum, is one of the illegal settlers who have taken over classrooms in the 111-year-old ML Jubilee School, depriving students of the primary and higher secondary sections. Picture by Bishwarup Dutta

Eleven classrooms in a 111-year-old school in central Calcutta have been illegally taken over by over 50 outsiders. ML Jubilee School has, thus, not been able to start its primary and higher secondary wings.

The school on Surya Sen Street, named after Mohammad Liak Chowdhury who founded it in 1897, is the only one in the city to offer English, Urdu and Bengali as first languages. Half of its rooms have been under the control of occupiers for over a decade.

“Five rooms each on the ground and second floors and a room on the first floor have been taken over by boarders,” alleged Abdul Mannan, the secretary of the school’s managing committee.

Metro found that four to five people were occupying each of the 11 rooms, which served as primary section classrooms a couple of decades ago. They are now filled with beds, almirahs, chairs and tables.

The occupiers, most of whom are from the neighbouring districts, bathe in the school compound and have even put up a clothesline.

“I have been staying in this room for 12-14 years,” said Shamim, an advocate hailing from Birbhum. He could not produce any document to prove that he had the right to stay in the room. “Come some other day, when all the boarders are here. We will talk then,” he added.

In 1906, Chowdhury had converted the school into a Waqf property. The Waqf deed mentions that the property is spread over 10 cottahs and five chatak (a chatak is equal to 45 sq ft).

The school building occupies nine cottah. There’s also a mosque in the compound.

Lack of space has come in the way of the school’s expansion. “We have to accommodate two sections from classes V to X and the entire administrative and management section in the 11 rooms at our disposal,” stated Mannan.

“We want to start courses that provide youths the skills needed in the job market but there is no space,” added Mannan. Repeated complaints by the school authorities to the Waqf board have fallen on deaf ears.

“We have instructed a mutwali committee (the caretaker of a Waqf property) to send us the name of the encroachers. We will take action after that,” said Irfan Ali Biswas, the CEO of the Waqf Board.

The school authorities, however, said they had sent the encroachers’ names to the board but no action was taken.