The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) has strongly condemned the Jharkhand government for carrying out anti-encroachment drive last year.
Commission chairperson Santha Sinha said here recently that the state government’s anti-encroachment drive had been carried out violating human rights.
As a result of the eviction, children living in slum areas had suffered tremendously because many students failed to appear their matriculation examinations as they had been uprooted and left helpless to survive, the NCPCR chairperson said.
NCPCR chairperson had been in the state capital to chair a two-day public hearing on child rights and implementation of the Right to Education Act.
The panel of NCPCR comprising Justice B Subhasan Reddy, Deepa Dixit, Mohuya Choudhuri and Love Verma heard 40 cases relating to absence of infrastructure in schools and non-registration of cases of children missing.
Citing a particular case in the district of Hazaribag, the NCPCR chairperson said that over 100 children in one of the villages had no access to high school education.
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The nearest high school from their villages was at a distance of 15 km and most the students left school after class V11.
At the public hearing with the panel, complaints were made on lack of classrooms, drinking water facility, electricity supply and poor teacher-student ratio in most of the schools.
Immediately after the public hearing, the NCPCR panel held a meeting with the departmental heads of the state government led by the state chief secretary S K Choudhary and recommended immediate steps on the lapses highlighted in the public hearing.