Agitation for school upgradation withdrawn

Chennai: Residents of Kamarajapuram protesting about their two-year-old demand for upgradation of an existing school to a higher secondary one, stopped their protest Monday night post discussions.

The residents were protesting against the allocation of a 4-acre land near a middle school in Kamarajapuram for constructing police quarters and an office of the Joint Commissioner. Five of the protesters had resorted to a hunger strike for the past four days.

As of date, Ambattur constituency has one higher secondary school for girls. And a primary school was upgraded to a middle-level school in 2006 but there was no higher secondary school built after that.

An inquiry by Chennai Corporation was ordered over two months back by the Chennai Metro Development Authority. Also a month back, an inquiry by Tahsildar was ordered by the Thiruvallur Collector but none of the inquiries happened following which the residents resorted to the protest.

“If this middle-school is upgraded to a higher secondary school, it would be beneficial for the students, especially the boys as there are none for the boys,” said a resident, advocate G Pugazhvedan.

“Today, we met the Thiruvallur collector and she gave an assurance that our concerns would be looked into,” he added. The protesters also met with the deputy commissioner of police of Ambattur, R. Sudhakar, to voice their concerns.  “We have shown the protestors the documents related to the construction of the office, and they too submitted their documents. The upgradation of the school would be taken to the next level,” said R. Sudhakar to DC. He, however, did not mention anything about the construction of the joint commissioner’s office.