Telangana stir: Parents urge Andhra CM to get schools reopened

Anxious and furious parents today requested Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy to ensure that their wards' academic year was not spoiled by getting schools and colleges in the city and other parts of Telangana re-opened immediately.

A committee of parents' associations met Reddy in his camp office this morning and complained about the prolonged closure of schools even after the Dusshera vacation, which ended on October 9.

"All educational institutions should be kept out of the strikes. The students' careers should not be jeopardised," the worried parents told the chief minister. Reddy asked them not to worry saying that the government was taking steps to get the educational institutions opened.

Later, talking to newsmen, the committee members asked the Telangana Joint Action Committee not to play with the lives of students.

"When bars, shopping malls, cinema halls and other establishments are doing their business without any hindrance, why are the educational institutions being forced to shut down," the angry parents questioned.

"We will wait till October 15 when the TJAC will meet to decide on the course of the ongoing general strike. If they don't let educational institutions function, we will sit and chalk out our course of action," the parents said.

Meanwhile, despite assurance by police that adequate security would be provided at schools and colleges, a majority of the institutions continued to extend their holidays.

SMSes are being sent to parents every night informing parents that the schools\colleges would "remain closed tomorrow".

Threats from the Telangana-Joint Action Committee (TJAC) notwithstanding, some schools, however, have been functioning for the past two days.

Reacting to the threat issued to certain educational institutions by TJAC leader M Kodandaram, who himself is a professor, Additional Director General of Police (Law and Order) Syed Anwarul Huda said, "If the managements approach us with complaints about such threatening calls, we will take action against the guilty as well as provide adequate security to the institutions."