Telangana High Court on Wednesday permitted the State government to take a call on the reopening of all government residential schools, social welfare and tribal welfare schools with hostel facilities.
A bench of Chief Justice Satish Chandra Sharma and Justice A. Rajasheker Reddy passed this direction, modifying an earlier direction given by the previous bench in a PIL petition.
Earlier, on August 31, the bench headed by the then Acting Chief Justice had instructed the government not to reopen State-run residential schools on the ground that they did not have adequate infrastructure to check the spread of coronavirus.
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The bench then said that it would be difficult for the students in the schools and hostels to maintain social distance, and in the absence of proper facilities, the students were likely to contract COVID-19 and become super-spreaders.
When the PIL plea came up for hearing, Advocate General B.S. Prasad requested the bench to reopen government residential schools with hostel facilities. Not opening these institutions would deprive their students of quality education, he contended. Due to closure of these orgnisations, the students were facing difficulties and missing the facilities like quality food provided by the government, he said.
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CJ Satish Chandra Sharma appreciated the efforts of the Telangana government in checking the spread of COVID-19. “In Telangana, the controlling of coronavirus was good,” he observed. The CJ also remarked that containing the virus in Telangana was good vis-a-vis the States of Kerala and Telangana.
The AG maintained that all precautionary measures were being taken by the government to ensure that no student contracted the virus. Standard Operative Procedures were being adhered to by hostel authorities to check spread of COVID-19, he said.