Midnapore, March 26: Grants to a girls’ higher secondary school in West Midnapore may be withheld if the institution continues to deny a teacher’s post to a qualified but blind woman.

District inspector of schools Nurul Hasan threatened to stop the grant-in-aid to Belda Pravati Girls’ Higher Secondary School after it refused to absorb Jhulan Mukhopadhyay as a faculty member.

Jhulan, who was born in 1976 with a congenital eye ailment, turned blind when she was two-and-half-years old.

“I am issuing a notice to the school authorities asking them to provide employment to Jhulan in a week. Otherwise, I shall not only stop grant-in-aid for the school but dismantle its managing committee and appoint an administrator to run the institution,” Hasan said today. He made it clear that a person empanelled by the School Service Commission has to be taken in.

Though disappointed, the Midnapore girl is unwilling to move court against the school at the moment. “Let me wait a few more days,” she said but also added: “I shall fight to the end for justice.” An MA in English with a B.Ed degree, she sat for the recruitment test conducted by the School Service Commission last year. Jhulan came to know that she had been empanelled as an English teacher at Belda Pravati school this year. The commission asked her to get in touch with the school authorities “immediately”.

Her ordeal began in January. “I first visited the school on January 7 to know when I should join. At this, the authorities told me not to bother them and that I would be informed at the proper time. Having heard nothing for nearly two months, I contacted the commission, which asked me to again get in touch with the school between March 20 and 29. Till now, I have not got a response. I have come to know from sources that the school will not absorb me as I am blind,” Jhulan said, tears in her eyes.

Her apprehension was not baseless. Kalpana Panda, the headmistress of the school, said: “We are helpless. It’s true that the school has no English teacher for the past three years. But we cannot appoint a blind person since this will compound the problem for the students. If she does not read or write, how will she teach?”

Asked about the threat to grants, a school managing committee member who did not want to be named said tonight they would take up the issue with “higher authorities”. “We shall explain our difficulties to them.”