KL Report
SRINAGAR
Coaching Centres Association (CCA) of Kashmir has taken a strong note of the statement made by education ministry in the state assembly that all coaching centers in the entire state except two are illegal. “This is a deep-rooted conspiracy by some vested interests to destroy the private tuition industry as well as career of lakhs of students,” CCA said on Tuesday.
“We strongly condemn the behavior of education department and therefore have called a valley wide strike of coaching centers on February 21, 2014. On that day all 550 coaching centers providing education to more than 50,000 students would voluntarily shut down to draw government attention towards the critical challenge facing this vital sector,” it added.
A statement from CCA said, “Our organization has been fighting since 2010 to get the registration of our coaching centers. Last year we were given provisional registration and then promised full-fledged registration. But for almost a year they delayed the registration process. We were then forced to approach the district administration. Deputy Commissioner Srinagar Farooq Shah convened a meeting of owners of coaching centres, officials of education department and police department on 19th December 2013 to resolve this issue. After a long meeting, Shah directed the coaching centres to register themselves with the education department within ten days, failing which a strict action would be taken against the unrecognized ones. Furthermore Shah asked the office of director education to issue registration papers to the coaching centres who fulfill all the guidelines set out by the government.”
Despite having few days to prepare the files, 140 coaching centers submitted their complete documents. But the registration never came neither did any answer from the education department, CCA statement added.
“We have every apprehension to believe that they may hijack our industry in the same way they did it with B.Ed. sector. The B.Ed. colleges are fully controlled by Ministers, MLA’s, bureaucrats and their relatives. Disregarding all norms, they have even banned the registration of new colleges as they continue to earn crores out of them. We feel their next target is our coaching centers, The statement said.
“Today they have selected two coaching centers probably from the same lobby. Tomorrow they will register more such centers even as they continue to block our registration applications. We want to ask them if they don’t give us registration then at least give us an explanation for the denial, the statement said.
