Meritorious School remains a house of controversies

Tribune News Service

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Jalandhar, January 30

The School for Meritorious Students here has always remained in controversies. Yesterday, principal of the school Gurcharan Singh Multani was shifted from the school and Kapurthala District Education Officer (DEO) Harinder Pal was given extra charge of the school after students had complained that Multani had beaten them up with a wiper when they protested against the school’s mess.

In 2016, former principal of the school KK Aery had resigned too.

Sources from the Education Department said poor quality food at the mess had remained an issue in the school then also. And for long, as per information, Aery had also raised the issue that the mess contractor was not providing healthy and nutritious meal to students and was compromising with their health by not giving them meals according to the menu.

Meanwhile, Aery said the decision to sack the principal, which was taken by the acting DEO, was not going to change anything. “I hardly think that it would bring any change,” said Aery.

Notably, the students had lodged a complaint regarding stale and poor quality food being served to them at the hostel mess. With complaints reaching officials in Chandigarh, Assistant Project Director of Meritorious Schools IPS Malhotra had reached the school campus here to verify the complaint.

The students said they were frequently falling ill and had developed chronic stomach-related ailments. They said they had also held a strike in the school. They told the officer that they had come to the school from faraway places to study and they did not want the mess issue should become an obstacle in their future in any way.

He had noted every point that was being told to him by the students. The students had told the officer that they were being served poor quality food since a long time and they had put up complaints several times but to no avail. As Malhotra spent the whole day in the school listening to grievances of the students, the latter told the officer that they were being given stale food, sub-standard quality fruits, curd and vegetables.

“On January 25, we got an email from an anonymous complainant following which action was initiated immediately. Earlier, we deputed Col Amarjeet Singh, seniormost principal of the Meritorious Schools at the school. He visited the school on January 26 and enquired the matter,” Malhotra had said before taking action against the principal.