Parents protest in front of the DAV Public School, Unit-VIII, in Bhubaneswar. Picture by Sanjib Mukherjee

Bhubaneswar, March 31: Parents’ associations of the DAV group of schools in Bhubaneswar have expressed their displeasure with the indifference of the state government regarding the school management’s “illegal” and “arbitrary” functioning.

While the fee hike issue is still pending in the Supreme Court, the schools entered into yet another row by trying to conduct an entrance examination to admit external candidates in Class XI.

Unruly scenes were witnessed outside all the four DAV public schools (Chandrashekharpur, Unit-VIII, Pokhariput, and Kalinganagar) on Saturday where about 2,000 students turned up with their parents to take the entrance tests.

The crowd went berserk after being informed that the exam had been cancelled following a court order.

The angry parents clashed with the management and demanded refund of Rs 1,000 they had deposited as application fee. The matter was brought under control only after the police intervened.

Earlier this month, the DAV group of schools had issued an advertisement inviting applications from students of other schools for admission into Class XI.

The forms were sold for Rs 1,000 each and the exam was scheduled for Saturday. However, parents of the existing students went to court against the school authorities demanding that the school should first admit the existing students from Class X before conducting entrance tests for external candidates.

The court passed an order for cancellation of the exam. It directed the school managements to admit the existing students first in all the three streams — science, commerce and humanities and then conduct the entrance exams for filling up of the remaining vacant seats on basis of merit.

However, the students who had already prepared for the entrance tests were unaware of the development and had reached the school.

DAV authorities said they had received the court order only on Friday afternoon.

“There was very little time to inform all the students but we immediately put it up on our website and the notice board. We also tried to inform them through the media but the information could not reach all the students,” said a senior official of DAV Public School, Chandrashekharpur.

The authorities said that they wanted to go ahead with the entrance tests because holding the tests after the publication of matriculation results would delay the admission process.