Srinagar: Schools reopened in Kashmir Valley on Wednesday after a nearly three-month-long winter break. However, it has been nine months since educational institutions in the Valley have worked fully.
As the Valley witnessed its worst turmoil in decades in the aftermath of the killing of popular Hizb-ul-Mujahedin commander Burhan Muzaffar Wani on July 8, 2016, the normal life remained paralysed for more than four months. The worst-hit were the educational institutes as schools, colleges and other institutes remained shut for months.
The schools were on a fortnight-long summer vacation when the turbulence started and could not reopen after Wani’s death. Also, over thirty schools across the Valley were burnt during the unrest.
Despite the hostile atmosphere and stiff opposition from sections of local population and political parties, particularly separatists, the authorities conducted the annual board examinations under unprecedented security in November-December last year.
Yet the exams acquired shades a politics as the BJP government at the Centre terming the overwhelming participation of the students in these as a powerful “surgical strike” against separatist militants.
The over 95 percent participation in Class X and XII examinations conducted by the Jammu and Kashmir Board of School Education (J&K BOSE) had prompted Union human resources development minister, Prakash Javadekar, to publicly assert that the students from Kashmir “have given a befitting reply to terrorists which is in itself is a powerful surgical strike."
The separatists and other sections of the society apart from select student and academics groups had opposed as, under the circumstances, it would have been risky to force the students to relocate to examination centres.
They had also said that hundreds of students had been maimed and even blinded in shotgun pellet firings and other actions of the security forces in their attempt to contain the unrest whereas thousands others were languishing in jails. Furthermore, due to the educational institutions remaining closed for over four months most of them were not able to complete their syllabi.
In response, the Jammu and Kashmir State Board of School Education curtailed the syllabi for the students appearing in these examinations and subsequently, the question papers were framed with a 50 percent relaxation.
It also gave the students the option of skipping the examinations then and the choice of appearing in these in March 2017 without any curtailment in syllabi. The examinations for remaining students are being held across the Valley currently.
While students in their colourful uniforms and their faces delightful headed for schools in Srinagar, the government has extended winter vacations in the areas which are still snow bound till March 12.
An official spokesman here said that the schools located in snowbound areas of Machael, Jamgund, Keran, Gurez, Karnah, Kodara, and Hajibal Gogaldara close to the Line of Control “shall observe extended winter vacation up to March 12, 2017”. He added that the vacations have been extended in view of the apprehensions of avalanche and road connectivity issues in these areas.
