A lawyer representing St Augustine’s Day School Calcutta on Wednesday admitted before the Calcutta High Court that the institution did not have an affiliation with the Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations.
On September 7, a group of parents whose children study in Classes X and XII staged an agitation in front of the school after they found out that the pupils had yet to be registered for the 2024 board exams.
On Wednesday, Justice Biswajit Basu came down heavily on the school management for collecting registration fees from students for the board exams without having the affiliation.
“The school authorities have been playing with the fate of the students. Due to the callous attitude of the school authorities, the students have been forced to hold the placards instead of pens,” he said while hearing a petition filed by the guardians of a section of Class X students.
The petitioners have sought the court’s intervention to ensure the students can write their board exams.
“Their act (of the school) should be considered a criminal offence and an FIR should be lodged against them immediately,” Justice Basu said.
Senior advocate Kalyan Banerjee, who represented the petitioners, told the court that the authorities were running the school “illegally”.
“The school does not have the approval from the board. Even then, the authorities asked the students (when they were in Class IX) to fill up registration forms. They collected fees for registration. Now, they are saying that the school did not receive any document from the board,” said Banerjee.
It was then that the lawyer for the school management admitted that the school did not have an affiliation. “The fund has been deposited for affiliation. But due to some mistake, the approval has not arrived yet,” he said.
Principals of other schools said students get registered in Class IX and XI to appear for the boards.
Calls to the school principal, Richard Gasper, went unanswered on Wednesday night. To a message seeking his reaction, Gasper replied that the lawyer representing the school was its official spokesperson.
Samir Choudhury, the school’s lawyer, told Metro that the original affiliation that dated back to the 1970s was for the premises on Ripon Street.
But the affiliation was “withdrawn” by the council in September last year following concerns over the safety of the building, he said. “We have undertaken repair work on the Ripon Street premises, in keeping with the norms of the civic body,” Choudhury said.
“From the middle of 2022, the school has been running from a newly constructed building on AJC Bose Road. The shifting happened at the behest of the CISCE. By August 2023, we submitted all the required documents to the council in connection with the affiliation of the school at the new address. We have been communicating with the council for the past two years,” he added.
The judge issued an order, asking the CISCE to appoint an officer to inspect the school.
The judge also appointed an advocate, Billwadal Bhattacharya, as the court’s special officer, and asked him to visit the school and file a report.
The lawyer appearing for the CISCE cautioned that the school building was old and posed a risk. “At present, the school has been running from an old and dilapidated building. So, shifting of the school is a very urgent task,” he said.
Asked by the judge, the school’s lawyer said there was no CCTV in the school. “Then, how will the approval be given? The school has been running in a dilapidated building, where there is no CCTV. How is the school being run? This is a criminal offence,” the judge said.
