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Thirty-seven government schools in five blocks of Bihar's Kishanganj district, which has a significant Muslim population, have been observing Fridays as their weekly holiday instead of Sunday, officials of the state education department said on Tuesday.
In the Pothia block of the district, 16 schools stay closed on Fridays and open on Sundays. "Thirty seven schools in the district remain closed on Fridays and this had been going on for a very long time. Before 1990, Kishanganj was a sub-division of the Purnia district. The instruction to keep schools closed on Friday was issued by an officer of the then Purnia district, which is being investigated," said District Education Officer Subhash Kumar Gupta. However, Gupta said there was nothing unusual about the practice. Gupta cited the example of the Vaishali district, where, he said, the same practice was being followed in several schools. The headmaster of a middle school in Karbala, Muhammad Waseem said, "in the past, there used to be a holiday in the school on Fridays, whether there is a government order in this regard or not. We are not even aware of it." Some members of the Hindu community, however, claimed that the due to the practice, the teachers who go to school on Sundays are not able to give time to their families and children. Earlier in July. the reports claimed that in Jharkhand's Jamtara and Dumka, schools were changing their weekly offs from Sundays to Fridays. (ANI)
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