Siliguri, April 10: A strike by the Chhatra Parishad, the students’ wing of the Congress, at Hindi Balika Vidyapeeth in Khalpara against “malpractices” forced the management to close down the institution indefinitely.

School manager P.K. Saha said he would file a complaint with police against the student outfit and inform the Siliguri sub-divisional officer, Smita Pandey, about the matter. He alleged that the Parishad was vitiating the atmosphere in the school.

The institution, which is affiliated to the CBSE board, has 1,700 students.

Mukhtar Ahmed, the Siliguri organising secretary of the Parishad, said they called the strike against a management which was forcing parents to buy text books from the school stall itself and uniforms from a particular shop in town.

The father of a Class IX boy said the management was not giving him the list of books to make sure that they were bought from the school stall itself.

Saha said it was not compulsory for students to buy books from the school. “Anyway, books are not easily available in the market,” he said. Saha added that it is a standard practice in any school to get the students’ uniforms stitched from only one place.

According to Saha, the school is run by a charitable trust and students are charged a monthly fee of only Rs 120.