Guardians protest in front of the teachers’ common room. Picture by Anirban Choudhury

Alipurduar, July 31: Trouble erupted in Railway High School in Alipurduar today over the distribution of forms for admission of children whose parents are not employees of the department.

The school had initially said it would admit only railway employees’ children this year, but later backtracked in the face of stiff opposition from other guardians who had already applied for their wards’ admission. Later, the school authorities said they would take in 39 “outside” students in Class I and 26 in Class II through admission tests.

Yesterday, when the guardians arrived at the school to collect the forms for the admission tests, the school authorities said no more than 85 forms were available and they would be given to only those who had applied earlier.

A couple of guardians who had not applied earlier protested and the form distribution was stopped. Afterwards, the guardians sorted out the problem among themselves and it was decided that no newcomers would be allowed to take forms.

However, today when the guardians returned to the school, the authorities refused to distribute the forms. Things came to a head around 3.15pm, when the school authorities put up a notice that said forms would not be distributed because “no guardian had come to collect them on July 30 between 10am and 12 noon”.

“How could the school authorities say that when we had been standing here from 10am to 7pm yesterday,” said a guardian, who did not want to be named.

The guardians demonstrated in front of the teachers’ common room and the RPF had to be called in to control the situation.

The principal was not available either and no one else agreed to clear the school’s stand.

Finally, around 5.45pm, the school authorities relented and form distribution began. “We will only be able to distribute 85 forms,” A.K. Jha, the divisional railway manager of Alipurduar, said.

The railway school is popular among guardians because of its good faculty, strict discipline and regular classes.