Parents at a village in Latur have withdrawn children from the zilla parishad primary school demanding the expulsion of eight HIV-positive students.
Parents at a village in Latur have withdrawn their children from a primary school run by the zilla parishad (district council) demanding the expulsion of eight HIV+ students.
The school's headmaster said that on Thursday, 148 students were pulled out of the school by parents following a unanimous resolution by the gram sabha (village council) of Hasegaon.
District council education officer Vilas Joshi said an NGO, Aamhi Sevak Sanstha, working for HIV+ people had admitted the eight boys to the school.
He said the authorities would make separate schooling arrangements for the boys if the villagers could not be persuaded to reconsider their decision. But the decision will only be taken on Sunday when the district's guardian minister, Dilip Deshmukh, visits Latur.
Deshmukh said he has directed the authorities as well as political and social workers to try to persuade the villagers that the presence of the HIV+ boys in the school was safe. But he repeated what Joshi said, that an alternative would be worked out for the eight boys if the villagers remained unmoved.
This is what seems likely to happen as the sarpanch, Bhausaheb Deshmukh, and other prominent villagers have not responded to offers to go to arbitration.
Ravi Bapatle, chairman of the NGO, said he established Aamhi Sevak Sanstha two years ago, bought a plot in Hasegaon, and constructed a few rooms to house HIV+ boys. This year he brought the eight boys, all orphans, and got them admitted to the district council school. He said he, too, had tried to persuade the villagers to accommodate the boys with their children but to no avail.
Aseem Sarode, a lawyer and human rights activist, said the attitude of the villagers showed that the crores of rupees that the government spends annually on HIV/Aids awareness goes down the drain. He said he would be reporting the Hasegaon incident to the higher-ups.
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