Admitting that guidelines for the schools were issued hurriedly following the rape of a six-year-old girl in a school at Marathahalli here, the State government on Wednesday told the Karnataka High Court that it would rework and issue comprehensive guidelines in consultation with school managements.
Meanwhile, the court directed the city police, in plainclothes, to inspect all the schools by September 15 to check implementation of some of the conditions, which were not implemented within the deadline of August 31, even though school managements had no objection for those conditions prescribed in the guidelines.
The court directed the police to submit an interim report on their inspection by September 16 and book criminal cases if the schools had not made an honest attempt to implement conditions that were acceptable to them.
Justice A.N. Venugopala Gowda issued the directions while hearing the petitions filed by the Karnataka Private School Joint Action Committee and others. Terming some of the guideline as “impractical”, the petitioners sought directions to the police to hold meeting with them to redress grievances on difficulties faced by them to implement the guidelines, and also to relax “impractical” guidelines.
Pulled upEarlier, the court pulled up the petitioners for not implementing the conditions that are acceptable to them, like police verification of non-teaching staff, issuing identity cards to parents/guardians, which were neither “impractical” nor financial unviable.
The court also pulled up the city Police Commissioner for not holding a meeting with the school managements despite repeated representations expressing difficulties in implementing the guidelines.
However, the Additional Advocate-General A.S. Ponnanna told the court that schools were opposing “entry of police to the school campus” as they had some reservations on police visits, while informing the court the desire of the State government to rework the guidelines as they were issued in a hurried manner.
