March 23: A Trinamul leader who had stalled a fee hike by a private school in New Town after a group of guardians staged a demonstration there received a note of disapproval from chief minister Mamata Banerjee today.
" Seta uchit hoyni kora. Na, eta kora uchit hoyni (That was not the right thing to do. No, not the right thing)," the chief minister told ABP Ananda during an interview.
More than 60 guardians were protesting outside St. John's ICSE School in Narayanpur on Wednesday when Tapas Chatterjee, deputy mayor of the Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation, arrived to speak to the school authorities. Meeting over, a school official announced that the proposal had been stalled.
Chatterjee justified his intervention. "I think the hike that had been announced was quite high," he said. "I requested the school management to withhold the hike because the institution mostly caters to students from families in the middle and lower-middle income groups."
Mamata's disapproval of his action came with a cushion. She said the guardians might have "forced" the councillor to voice their grievances. "I might say it was not right. But public servants are often under compulsion. They are forced. (People tell them) Why won't you go? You are the local representative. Locals plead with a public representative," Mamata said.
She had recently warned Trinamul leaders not to meddle in the functioning of private hospitals or publicly speak out against them. This was after former minister Madan Mitra had telephoned a top official of Apollo Gleneagles Hospitals, which had been accused of medical negligence and excessive billing while treating an accident victim.
Asked if the deputy mayor of Bidhannagar should have tapped the government instead of taking it upon himself to prevent a school from raising its fees, the chief minister said it was part of a public representative's job to talk to people. "What if 10 guardians came to him with a problem and he went to speak on their behalf? He could have gone to submit a memorandum. That is allowed in a democracy," she said.
Mamata had said in the Assembly on March 3: "I think there is a need to do something to control private schools. There are some private schools that are very good. But some of them charge so much in fees and donations. I think this needs to stop."
Several private schools immediately slammed the brakes on revising their fees for fear of inviting the chief minister's wrath. Some withheld the annual hike in teachers' pay since that would entail increasing revenue.
School donations
Mamata today called out a section of missionary schools for taking "steep donations" even as she lauded their education standards as "unparalleled".
"Some of them take such steep donations, official donation and unofficial - one during admission, another later. It is not a problem for those who can afford. But it is a huge problem for those who cannot," she said.