1,500 schools closed

Dinesh Manhotra

Tribune News Service

Panjgrain (Hiranagar), Sept 30

After flare-up of tension on the international border (IB) and the Line of Control (LoC) following the surgical strike by the Army yesterday, authorities have been asked to close schools situated within the radius of 10 km of the borders.

School Education Director Smita Sethi said the orders were issued as a precautionary measure to avoid any unfortunate incident in case of shelling from across the border.

Both government and private schools have been closed in the border areas of Kathua, Samba, Jammu, Rajouri and Poonch districts. Although authorities are busy preparing the list of schools being closed due to tension on the border, according to a rough estimate, over 1,500 schools have been closed. The closing of schools, at this time, when half-yearly examinations are going on, is likely to affect the studies of students of the border areas.

“Out of nearly 1,700 private and government schools, 1,000 educational institutions have been closed,” said Chief Education Officer (CEO), Poonch, Lal Hussain.

“We are preparing a data of the total number of schools but according to a rough estimate, over 500 schools have been closed in other districts,” he said.

The functioning of other educational institutions located in the “safer” zones is likely to be affected because premises of such schools would be utilised to house people in case of any migration.