Bhubaneswar, April 2: Sudarshan Pradhan’s dream of educating his son seems dashed.

Aluminium major Vedanta had been sponsoring the education of Sudarshan’s 11-year-old son, Jagdish, since 2008. The company, whose project to set up a world class university near Puri is in a limbo, has stopped paying Jagdish’s school fees from this academic session.

For Pradhan, a fourth-grade employee at a private company, paying the fee for his son, who is a Class VI student of DAV High School in Puri, is an uphill task.

Pradhan is not alone. His fate is shared by 500 other families, who had parted with their land for the Vedanta university. The Vedanta group , as part of its corporate-social responsibility, had decided to fund the education of their children at Puri DAV High School.

With Vedanta unwilling to pay, the DAV authorities have asked the guardians to withdraw their wards from the academic session that begun yesterday.

The company used to pay admission charges, transportation and tuition fees of the students enrolled in Classes I to VIII. The annual cost to the company came to around Rs 15,000 each student.

Sources said Vedanta decided to stop the sponsorship programme as their Puri project did not take off.

For the poor students it was a dream come true as the school had begun imparting education both in Odia and English. School principal Kaberi Samal said: “Though we are an English medium school, keeping in mind the background of the children, we have been imparting education both in Odia and English.”

Ekadeshi Sahoo, 39, one of the parents, said when government officials and Vedanta authorities convinced them to part with their land for the university, they had reluctantly conceded.

“They promised that our lives would change and our sons and daughters would be educated,” said Sahoo.

A Vedanta official said: “We have already shelved the project. We will not able to sponsor the children any more because we don’t have the project there and there is no plan to revive it.”

On the other hand, regional director, DAV schools, Himanshu Mohanty said: “Vedanta did not respond to our call. It will not be possible for us to impart free education to nearly 500 children.”

The district education head, circle inspector of schools Niranjan Behera said: “I have personally requested other schools in the district to admit these students.”

Former MLA Uma Ballabha Rath, a staunch opponent of the proposed project, said: “When Vedanta is unable to run a school, how can we hope that it would have been able to set up a world-class university here in Puri?”