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Balurghat, Jan. 13: The future of around 300 students at the Kendriya Vidyalaya in Balurghat is in limbo with the municipality asking the school authorities to vacate immediately the building where the institution has been functioning for the past five years.
The RSP-run municipality told the school authorities to move elsewhere before March 31 as the civic body wants to start some projects at the two-storied building.
Apart from the school, some sections of the education department and the office of the integrated child development scheme also function from the same building. These offices have also been served notices to vacate the building.
The central school took the building near Raghunathpur on rent in 2007 and started functioning with classes from I to VI.
“The Kendriya Vidyalaya authorities had told us that they would use the building for sometime only and shift to new premises soon. But they didn’t. We cannot afford to let out the building for such a long time as we have decided to launch some projects there,” said Sucheta Biswas, the chairperson of the civic body.
Biswas didn’t disclose the kind of projects the municipality wanted to launch.
The school has 290 students studying from Class I to Class X.
The two-storied building was built in the 1980s ostensibly to accommodate working women, but sources said the municipality had never made arrangements for it. Instead, the building was leased out to several government departments.
The school had been handed over 6.44 acres of government land at Khanpur in 2011 to construct its own building. When the authorities went there a few days back to start work, they met with resistance from people who had been living on the plot illegally. The squatters put up the resistance demanding compensation and the Rapid Action Force had to be deployed to control the situation.
The school principal said it was very difficult to find an alternative building in Balurghat before the next academic session that would begin in April.
“Since the inception of the school, we have been using a building of the municipality on rent, as we did not get land from the government in time. Recently, the municipal chairperson issued us a notice asking us to vacate the building. We have written to the civic body asking for more time. We haven’t got the reply. In Balurghat, it is very hard to find a new building which suits our needs. We don’t know where to go with these students,” said principal Pratip Bagchi.
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