Many private schools and colleges across Telangana remained closed on Thursday, Juky 4, in response to the call by various student unions for a nationwide bandh and protests over the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) question paper leak.
The call for bandh of all educational institutions from kindergarten (KG) to postgraduate (PG) was made by the National Students Union of India (NSUI), Students' Federation of India (SFI), All India Students Federation (AISF) and other student organisations demanding scrapping of the National Testing Agency (NTA), a Supreme Court inquiry into the question paper leak and the resignation of the Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan.
NSUI State President Balmoor Venkat led a rally, in which RL Murthy, T Nagaraju (SFI), Putta Laxman (AISF), Mahesh (PDSU), S Nageswara Rao and others participated, at Narayanaguda.
Meanwhile, the State Education Department said that it had not issued any official notice for schools to remain closed.
A senior official in the School Education Department told The New Indian Express, "We have not issued any holiday notice to the schools. Classes were conducted as usual. However, at some places, the student unions asked schools to call off classes".
Members of SFI visited a few schools in places like Amberpet, Secunderabad, Musheerabad, Jubilee Hills, Khairatabad and Naraynaguda and asked the management to join the protest. However, many private schools had declared a holiday with due notices to parents a day before, citing the bandh.
A faculty of Sadhu Vaswani International School said that a notice was circulated on Wednesday, July 3, to parents that the school would remain closed on Thursday due to the bandh.
However, some schools made a last minute decision on Thursday morning to declare a holiday. Murali Gaddam, member of Hyderabad Student-Parent Association (HSPA) told The New Indian Express, "A few private schools sent last minute notices in the morning declaring holiday due to which many parents had to face inconvenience. A few parents did not check the messages and ended up ferrying their children to and from the school.”
The situation at the University of Hyderabad (UoH) and JNTU was normal and classes were conducted as usual, said officials.
Osmania University (OU) did see some action by the SFI members with protests and sloganeering and classes called off.
An official from the OU told The New Indian Express, "We did not send out any holiday notice for today. However many students refrained from attending classes, while student unions also stopped ongoing classes in some departments."
Satya Nellie, a member of AISF said that protests were staged at Engineering, Arts, Law and Science colleges of the OU.
