Gurugram: A court order imposing a fine of Rs 5 lakh and summoning the principal secretary and the director of secondary education in connection with poor amenities in government schools has given ammunition to the Opposition to hit out at the Manohar Lal Khattar-led BJP government in Haryana.
In an affidavit to the Punjab and Haryana High Court, the government submitted that Haryana has 14,281 schools with 95,363 available and under construction classrooms and 42,945 other rooms. The schools need 8,240 additional classrooms requiring Rs 947.60 crore and 5,630 other rooms needing Rs 703.75 crore.
It added that 321 schools don’t have boundary walls which require Rs 86.54 crore, 131 schools don’t have functional drinking water facilities which will require Rs. 92 lakh, 1,047 schools are without boys’ toilets and 538 schools are without girls toilets which require Rs 25.44 crore and Rs 15.60 crore, and 236 schools need a budget of Rs 4.18 crore for electricity connections.
Hearing a petition filed by a Kaithal resident flagging the poor amenities in government schools, the Punjab and Haryana High Court noted that the “government’s insensitivity is glaring as government schools yearn for rooms, electricity, toilets as well as drinking water”.
The absence of toilets in 538 girls schools only highlights the plight and condition at the ground level, Justice Vinod S. Bhardwaj said in his order passed on 23 November.
The absence of any crystallised action plan only reflects that there is a complete lack of planning by authorities, Justice Bhardwaj said, adding that this remained unchanged even after the two senior officials were requested to come up with a complete action plan.
There seems to be no improvement despite a lapse of over eight-nine months, the HC said.
Former chief minister and senior Congress leader Bhupinder Singh Hooda told ThePrint that the court exposed what the people already knew in Haryana that the Manohar Lal Khattar government was a complete “non-performer”.
The National Education Policy (NEP) mandates investments in education to be 6 percent of the GDP, but Haryana is spending much less than this, he alleged.
As per Haryana’s budget document for 2023-24, the Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP) was Rs 60,8420 crore on constant price (2011-12) and Rs 9,94,154 crore on the current prices. The allocation for education, sports, arts, and culture put together was Rs 20,339.84 crore out of which Rs 19,286.94 crore was on revenue expenditure (salaries) and only Rs 1,052.90 crore on capital expenditure (infrastructure development).
According to PRS Legislative Research, in the 2023-24 budget, Haryana allocated 14 percent of its total expenditure towards education, which is lower than the average allocation for education by states (14.8 percent). .
In the 2022-23 budget, it said, Haryana allocated 14.2 percent of its total expenditure for education in 2022-23. This is lower than the average allocation (15.2 percent) for education by all states, it added.
Hooda alleged that when he was in power from 2005 to 2014, he focused on building new schools and universities, but nothing happened in the past nine years of the Khattar government.
Congress general secretary Kumari Selja told The Print Monday that the court order showed that the government’s slogans ‘Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao’ were merely the slogans written on the walls. It was shocking that hundreds of schools don’t have boundary walls and toilets for girls, she said.
Praveen Attrey, media secretary, Haryana government, said CM Khattar clarified Sunday that the data cited in the high court were old and that the fresh data would be provided to the court during the next hearing.
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What court found
After noticing a large number of anomalies and inaction by the official respondents, the court had sought an affidavit from the Director General of Secondary Education through an order issued 31 October.
On 25 November last year, an affidavit was filed which revealed that Rs1,176.38 crores out of the central funds could not be utilised over a period of 10 years while the budget allocation of Rs 13,420.97 crore by the state remained unutilised for the same period.
An additional affidavit was filed later giving details pertaining to the budget allocation, expenditure and excess/surrendered school budget for the financial Years 2012-2013 to 2022-2023.
“There has been a surrender of Rs 6,794.07 crore against the state schemes and Rs 3,881.92 crores under centrally sponsored schemes, bringing the total surrendered amount to Rs. 10,675.99 crore,” the court observed.
“The affidavit filed by the director is nothing more than a jugglery of statistics with no commitment to addressing the core issues that are glaring and staring in the face of the affidavit… There is a complete silence maintained about the timelines within which such basic amenities like toilets in schools, as well as the electricity connection and drinking water facilities, would be made available, apart from the fact that the additional classroom requirements and additional other room requirements has itself been assessed by the respondent at more than 13,000,” the HC said.
“The running state of the affairs of the department by the Directorate and the Principal Secretary thus leaves much room for improvement and pro-active vision and leadership, a quality found severely lacking,” it added.
(Edited by Tony Rai)