HC instructs Telangana government not to reopen government residential schools with hostel facilities

No student should be forced to attend physical classes, says the Bench

Telangana High Court on Tuesday instructed the State government not to reopen its residential schools with hostel facilities, including those being run by Social and Tribal Welfare departments, for next four weeks. Earlier, the State government decided to reopen all government and private schools and conduct physical classes for all standards from Wednesday. The government issued a memo to this extent a week ago. Challenging this memo, a citizen Mandapati Bala Krishna filed a PIL plea. Describing the government’s decision “arbitrary” and an example of violation of Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution, the petitioner sought to set aside the memo. After hearing contentions of the petitioner’s counsel and Advocate General B.S. Prasad, the bench ordered that no government residential school with hostel facility should be reopened till further orders. The bench said that it wanted to know what medical infrastructure and backup facilities were pout in place to protect students of these residential schools in the event of students contracting COVID-19.