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| Students take an examination at Raghunath Hindu High School in Patna City. Picture by Sachin |
Patna, July 22: The students of Shri Raghunath Hindu High School in Patna City pray to rain gods to help them take their examinations. Relentless shower over the past few days has worsened the leakage in the ceiling of the institution’s building.
Examinees at the school that functions at present from the second floor of Rajkiya Kanya Madhya Vidyalaya, Bahri Begampur, have to struggle because the water seeping in through the leaking roof is a constant threat to the answersheets.
Manish Kumar, a Class X student, said: “It is very difficult to take a test in a classroom with a leaking roof. The answersheets get wet and the writing is blotted or washed away. We can only pray to the rain gods to help us.”
Many examinees sat with open umbrellas in the classroom as they answered the questions.
The school authorities claimed that they had written to a number of state government departments but the officials had offered no remedy.
“I sent a letter to the Madhyamik Shiksha officer as well as the district education officer on July 12, 2006, and explained that the school building was in a shambles. But the officials have been apathetic to our problems,” said Shikha Chakraborty, the principal of the school.
She added: “The fans in the school do not work because of a short circuit, adding to our woes. The registers and the furniture are soaked because of the incessant rainfall and the leakage. The school building may collapse any time.”
Sources said the school authorities also wrote a letter to road construction minister Nand Kishore Yadav, who suggested that a new building be constructed for the school. But legal complication prevented the plan from seeing the light of day.
“We also sent a letter to the road construction minister Nand Kishore Yadav. The letter, written by Santosh Mehta, the chairman of the school’s managing committee, described how the institution is suffering from lack of infrastructure. The missive also described how the building was in a shambles and it was risky to take classes here. It concluded with a request to shift the school to another building,” the principal said.
The school got a slight ray of hope when Yadav sent a letter to the former human resource development minister Brishen Patel suggesting that a new building could be constructed for the school on the premises from which it was operating. However, the principal of Rajkiya Kanya Madhya Vidyalaya was sent no corresponding instruction, as a result of which the plan did not work out.
The school was also given Rs 8 lakh for renovation. However, as it does not have a building of its own, the fund had to be returned.
To add to its woes, the school has been sent a cumulative electricity bill of Rs 33,000 though the administration has written a number of letters to the electricity board about illegal hooking from its supply line. In fact, at present, the school does not have any power supply.
Residents of the area are also annoyed because chief minister Nitish Kumar had promised an upgrade for the school while inaugurating Jagdeo Park in the neighbourhood but nothing has been done till now.
“Last year, Nitishji came to the inauguration of Jagdeo Park. He promised the school would soon get a facelift and it would be given land in the neighbourhood. Nothing has been done yet,” said Nilesh Kumar, a resident of the area.