School bulldozed as students sit exam Salt dept says land on which building stands is theirs, but Bhandup school refutes claim

School bulldozed as students sit exam

Salt dept says land on which building stands is theirs, but Bhandup school refutes claim

Authorities of the salt department partially demolished the first floor of a 19-year-old government-aided school in Bhandup (East) on Friday while the students were writing their examination papers. The school was not even given any prior notice for the demolition. The 400-odd students of MD Keni School run by the Gurujan Shikshan Prasarak Mandal, which was built on a salt pan land, became victims of a land row. The school had eight months ago built an one-storey structure to accommodate more students. At 12.30pm on Friday, people claiming to be from the salt department barged into the classes along with the police constables and started dragging students and teachers out of the school. “The entire first floor classrooms where class seven students would sit were demolished along with the benches. We were not even given time to collect the books given by Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan. They are all buried in the debris,” said principal Savitri Ketkar. Agitated school students along with Kapil Patil, an MLC elected from the teachers constituency, sat in front of the police vans and refused to let them move. Patil argued with the police and stopped the demolition. “The demolition of the school was completely illegal. This land was transferred to the state government by the central government’s salt department in 1995 itself. The ownership papers clearly show that the state government owns the land and the government had allowed the school to operate on this land,” he said. “We have taken all the required permissions from the state government,” said Parmeswar Shinde, director of the school. “Initially we only had two classrooms but due to the growing number of students, we added three other classrooms. We are an aided school and had submitted all the papers to the government at the time of the approval. We had sought permission from the salt department as well for the recent additions, but they had asked for a bribe.” Sandhya Patankar, 12, was terrified when she saw a bulldozer break down the walls of her classroom. She was forcefully dragged out by lady constables from the classroom while she was writing her math exam. “The police entered the classrooms and told us to vacate the building. They grabbed our hands and dragged us out of the structure. I even grazed my elbow on the way out,” said Sandhya. The school, which had over 450 students from class 1 to 10, suffered a huge losses due to the demolition. It is the only school in the vicinity that is affordable to the students. “It is estimated that we might incur costs up to Rs4 to 5 lakh to rebuild the structure. We are thinking of ways to raise funds for this as we offer free education to students and only charge minimum fees for computer classes,’’ said Shinde, director of the school.