BELGAUM: The children studying in the derecognised schools against whom the Government has initiated action will be allowed to continue for the current academic year but they would have to shift to recognised English-medium schools in the coming year, Primary Education Minister Basavaraj Horatti told the Legislative Council on Thursday.

Mr. Horatti said he was willing to conduct any kind of inquiry suggested by the members to find out how many bureaucrats and officials had their spouses or family members running English-medium schools illegally, and promised action against such officers within 24 hours. Responding to a debate in which several members came up with suggestions to handle the issue without affecting the future of lakhs of children who had been studying in schools that were illegally operating in English medium, Mr. Horatti made it clear that the crackdown on these 1,400-odd schools that were given permission to open Kannada-medium schools, but were illegally running English-medium ones, had not been done in an arbitrary manner. "We have considered the consequences at every step, and taken the decision to pull up the erring schools," he said. He assured the House that the shifting of the children to legal English-medium schools would be effected as smoothly as possible.

Suggestions galore

The many suggestions from the members would be borne in mind and everyone would be consulted, he said. But there would be no let up in booking all the derecognsied schools, and penalising them.

For this, he invited the members of the Opposition, and other parties to suggest the means of carrying out this task.

He would be willing to set up a House committee, or any other form of inquiry suggested by them. V.R. Sudarshan (Congress) said when the Government did not hesitate to change the law to get around court directions on land encroachment and other violations, it must consider regularising these schools in the interests of the children. Prabhakar Kore (Congress) said it was time the Government stopped neglecting the rural students who could contribute immensely to the economy as human resource if only they had access to English education.

Marithibbe Gowda (Independent) said the list of derecognised schools had not been drawn up in a fair manner, and the Government had ignored the possibility that many of the schools could be victims of "bullying" by officials who might have some personal grouse against the managements.

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