SC raps Bihar for poor education facilities

NEW DELHI: A cash-crunched Bihar government has landed itself in a predicament after the Supreme Court directed it to fulfil its undertaking submitted before the apex court that it would revamp the entire education infrastructure to introduce “oriental” learning by well-trained teachers.

Currently, the number of trained teachers is far less than the vacancies in the state that was under Lalu Prasad’s RJD for 15 years and is now governed by BJP’s Nitish Kumar. The state is under judicial action to act now, or face contempt for not doing its duty for the welfare of children.

According to the Comptroller and Auditor General’s (CAG) report last year, at least 1732 schools in Bihar had only one room and 4398 upper primary schools had no rooms for their headmaster. Another 1275 schools did not have buildings to house them. Complete sets of books were never made available to any school thereby depriving the benefit of the Sravshikhsa Abhiyan Scheme to a large number of children in Bihar.

The CAG also revealed that model schools for girls were neither proposed nor opened in the test-checked districts. The government also failed to introduce retention drive in any of the districts. Instead, the government spent a whopping Rs 1.68 crore for purchasing 247 computers in four districts which are lying unutilised due to the non-existence of buildings and computer-trained teachers.