More than 10,000 students in districts ravaged by Maoist
insurgency in the eastern Indian state Jharkhand, an ethnic stronghold,
can now go back to their class rooms on a regular basis with security forces vacating 28 of the 43 schools in the districts affected by Maoist
insurgency in the state.
The security forces had set up the camps in the schools to battle red terror. The move assumes significance in view of the ensuing election in the state in December.
In response to a fresh
Jharkhand High Court order 16 Sept 2009 in a public interest litigation (
, the state government and the Jharkhand police said it had vacated “28 of the 43 schools it had occupied in the Naxal-infested districts of the state”.
In their ruling, the bench comprising Justice M.Y. Iqbal and Justice B.K. Sinha said the “security forces had to vacate the schools as early as possible.”
The court had set a deadline of six months last year when the case was filed in Jharkhand High Court last year.
Most of these schools are located in the tribal areas.
“Though the police claim that they have vacated 28 schools, the CRPF at the same time is taking over new schools. For instance, the CRPF has set up a camp at the GLA College in Daltonganj, one of the oldest co-education higher education centres in the Naxal hotbed, and a couple of schools in East Singhbhum. It is difficult to remove the CRPF camps from schools because of the forthcoming Assembly election,” petitioner Shashi Bhushan Pathak, the general secretary of the PUCL (People’s Union of Civil Liberties), Jharkhand, said. The non-profit human rights forum had petitioned the court in November 2008.
State president of PUCL Subrato Bhattacharjee told IANS that Human Rights Watch, a US-based rights watchdog, which visited Jharkhand last year to survey the state of education in the insurgency ravaged districts of Jharkhand will release a “document in December on how presence of security forces in schools in the state has taken toll on the education in Jharkhand”.
The PUCL, after investigating the security camps in the government lower, middle and high schools across the state last year had filed an application under the Right to Information Act last year to “ascertain the number of schools where security forces and police had set up temporary outposts”.
Nearly 25 per cent of the students in the 43 schools occupied by the CRPF are tribal and backward caste girls, Pathak said.
“We had estimated around 46 schools, but the state government and the police in its affidavit said 55 schools were occupied by security forces. We later filed a PIL in the high court. After all, the matter concerns the education and future of thousands of tribal children in the state, where Maoist violence has taken the maximum toll on children and their ambient social and academic fabric,” Subrato Bhattacharjee, state president of the PUCL, said.
Explaining the presence of CRPF and police camps in schools in districts affected by Naxalism, Bhattacharjee said “it is easy for the CRPF to operate from schools because they are located in the villages from where the insurgents are easy to track.”
Many of the schools do not have permanent teachers and the dropout rate is high among the tribal children. School buildings also offer the security forces ample space to park themselves and their arsenals.
“We fear now with the election in the state barely a month away, the CRPF might take over the schools they have vacated. The schools serve both as polling booths, strong rooms and security camps,” Pathak and Bhattacharjee chorused.
The move to vacate the schools comes exactly 30 years after the first CRPF camp was set up at Taljhari in Dumka district in 1979 long before the Maoist insurgents struck terror in the mineral rich district, Pathak said.
The Jharkhand police and the state government in a “counter affidavit” admitted that “security forces were occupying the premises and buildings belonging to schools in heavily Maoist infested areas of the state.”
However, senior police officer Raj Kumar Mallick (DIG), who filed the counter affidavit on behalf of the respondents (the state and police of Jharkhand) countered the PUCL charge that education had been affected in these schools.
“In most of these schools, education had not been affected and regular classes were being held where students from nearby villages take admission and undergo regular classes despite the deployment of security personnel,” the counter affidavit said.
The police said security forces occupied only a portion of the school.
“The losses suffered by the students are irreparable because they have been not able to attend classes for long spells in the Maoist areas. Can the state compensate their loss?” Pathak said.