Siliguri, Nov. 4: The Guardians’ Forum of North Bengal today said it would reconsider the indefinite strike it had threatened to start at eight English medium schools depending on the outcome of a meeting convened by the Siliguri Municipal Corporation (SMC) on November 6.

The announcement was made after a meeting between forum leaders and Nantu Paul, the deputy mayor of SMC, this morning.

“We met the deputy mayor and he requested us to withdraw the strike. He told us that a meeting involving the representatives of the schools concerned and parents would be convened,” Sandeepan Bhattacharjee, president of the Forum, said today.

“We have assured him that if there is a positive outcome at the meeting, we are definitely ready to reconsider our decision of indefinite strike,” he added.

Paul, when contacted, said the SMC would ask each of the eight schools, accused by the Forum of charging revised fees despite a government order, to send representatives to the meeting.

“Five persons, representing the guardians, would be there at the meeting that will start at 12 noon. We want the impasse to end at the earliest as it is affecting studies of thousands of children. If the forum resorts to strike, the situation will turn more complicated,” said the deputy mayor.

St Michael’s School, one of the eight institutions where the forum had threatened to launch strike from November 9, said today the institution had been wrongly dragged into the controversy. “Our tuition fee in 2005 was Rs 650 and it remains the same even now. So, reverting to last year’s fee does not arise at all,” Anjan Chakravarti, the secretary of the school, said.

Told about the school’s clarification, the forum president said: “We will definitely look into it and if proven true, it would surely be considered.”

Arup Majumdar, whose daughter studies in Class X at St Michael’s School, confirmed that there had not been any hike in tuition fees in the last couple of years.