UP school sealed after burqa dance video surfaces
text_fields
Lucknow: The education department has sealed a school in Uttar Pradesh’s Gonda district after a video purportedly showing minor girls dancing in burqas during an Independence Day programme went viral.
Officials said the school was found to be operating without the mandatory recognition from the education department. The premises were sealed on Monday evening after an inquiry was conducted into the institution.
The school had begun functioning in the current academic session and provided education up to Grade 5, officials said.
The video, which surfaced on Sunday, allegedly showed four girl students dancing to Bollywood and Bhojpuri songs during an Independence Day event. School manager Ram Suresh Maurya told the media that the institution had started operations only this academic year.
Maurya also claimed that the girls featured in the video did not belong to a minority community, before ending the phone call.
Gonda Block Education Officer Riyaz Ahmed said the school had been sealed because it lacked recognition from the office of the Basic Shiksha Adhikari.
Ahmed said he visited the school after the video came to light and found only a few people on the six-room premises.
“We locked the school premises. We have asked the authorities of a nearby school to admit the students who were studying here so that their education is not affected,” he said.
The officer said he had inspected the school earlier this month after noticing that it had started functioning. However, classes had ended by the time he reached the premises, where he found only five to seven students and a teacher.
Ahmed said he had asked the school manager to produce the recognition documents. The manager allegedly told him that the application for recognition was still pending and that the school had commenced operations during the ongoing academic session.
“I had asked him not to run the school until it obtained the required recognition,” Ahmed said.
He added that the parents of the students present during the earlier inspection had also been advised to enrol their children in a recognised school.
The education department has now directed a nearby recognised school to accommodate the affected students so that their studies do not suffer because of the closure.