Bidhannagar Government High School is in the middle of a raging controversy. While the assistant head master Tarapada Santra was conferred with the Siksha Ratna award by the chief minister on Tuesday, a sword hangs over the headmaster of the same school, Sukumar Chakraborty, over “irregularities” found by a school education department committee after an inspection on August 29.

An “order”, dated September 1, 2017 and bearing the reference number 1190. SE (Adm) Vig-07/2017, has been issued from Bikash Bhavan, a soft copy of which is available with The Telegraph Salt Lake placing Chakraborty “under suspension… with immediate effect”. But till the time of the newspaper going to the press on Wednesday night, the order had not reached the headmaster. The assistant headmaster was intimated by department officials on Wednesday of another inspection on Thursday.

The call informing the school about the inspection on August 29 too had come to Santra, and not to Chakraborty. “The officials had come within 15 minutes or so of the call that day,” said Santra.

Inspection blues

The “order” lists the following irregularities: no proper maintenance of the mid-day meal register and records, mid-day meal in charge found absent at the time of distribution of food, water logging and poor house-keeping, toilets attached to laboratories not being available to students and being utilised as a store for electrical debris, food found available for only 40-50 students out of 294 under mid-day meal programme and four drinking water taps being found non-functional out of nine taps.

This, the team deemed as “gross negligence of duty on part of the headmaster”.

Several other teachers of the school that The Telegraph Salt Lake spoke to expressed dismay at how only the headmaster alone could be deemed at fault, that too only three months after he had joined. Chakraborty joined the school in end-May.

But Santra, who was in charge of the school for 11 months before Chakraborty joined, said he was “just an ordinary teacher” and had “no administrative responsibilities”. “He (the headmaster) consults me when he wants to.” Santra was also in charge of the school for around three years as assistant headmaster in charge till November 2014.

The West Bengal Government School Teachers’ Association is rallying around the beleaguered headmaster who is barely five months away from retirement. “How could they suspend him without even a chance to defend himself?” asked Saugata Basu, general secretary of the association.

As for the charge of less mid-day meals being procured than the number of students present, the school’s former headmaster Rupak Hom Roy, who retired in May 2016, said he had seen how food went waste during his tenure as many guardians were averse to their ward taking the mid-day meal. “The Sarva Siksha Mission cell pays for the mid-day meals. The funds do not come to the school. All the school does is indicate the requirement based on which an outside agency supplies the food and raises the bill accordingly. Instead of procuring food for all the students, I started this practice of students being asked during the attendance registration in the first hour whether they wished to take the meal that day. The order would be placed accordingly. Looks like he (Chakraborty) did not get a chance to explain the practice.”

Mid-day meal mess

Teachers admit that there were corrections made in the mid-day meal register for the morning section by the teacher-in-charge. As for the day section, Saptarshi Roy, the clerk who maintains the register, had taken leave on the day of the inspection and the register could not be shown to the team. “But I had given the duplicate key to the almirah to the assistant headmaster some months ago. I do not know why he did not open the almirah,” said Roy when contacted on Wednesday.

Santra claimed he did have some keys but not the key to the almirah in question.

As for the charge of accumulation of debris, teachers said the public works department was working in the laboratory building. “They had dumped electrical waste in the toilet adjacent to the physics lab. It is not used as students spend barely an hour in the lab. There is just one sweeper for the whole of the school. It is not possible for him to do everything,” said a teacher unwilling to be named.

Headmaster Chakraborty, who fell ill on Wednesday morning but was forced to return to the school in the afternoon after hearing of another possible inspection the day after, refuses to be drawn in. “I have not received the order and so I am continuing to serve the school to the best of my abilities. If the news is true and if I am given a chance to defend myself against the charges I will do so.”

The Telegraph Salt Lake tried to contact all three members of the inspection team — school education secretary Dushyant Nariala, commissioner of school education Avanindra Singh and joint director Manoranjan Roy. While the first two refused to take the call, the third disconnected on getting to know the caller’s identity.

Santra said Chakraborty was an honest man who found it difficult to get things done in the absence of adequate Group D workers.

As for the fingers pointed at his nomination for Siksha Ratna, he threatens to file a defamation suit against “those who are alleging that I am involved in private tuitions and doing business with the text books I have written.” Siksha Ratna requires candidates to nominate themselves online and Santra, a geography teacher, says he had scored highly because of his publications and PhD.