Farmers Movement Archive

DEO’s insult: Teachers want LPA members held

Ludhiana: The schoolteachers’ unions protested for two hours outside the mini secretariat here to seek the arrest of the Ludhiana Parents’ Association (LPA) office-bearers who had garlanded district education officer (secondary) Lakhvir Singh Samra with shoes.Earlier in the morning, deputy commissioner Varinder Kumar Sharma and police commissioner Gurpreet Singh Bhullar met the DEO. DC’s father, retired government schoolteacher Jeet Ram Sharma, accompanied the officers. He said: "It is an unfortunate incident. There is a way of protesting. Misbehaving with a government official and disrespecting him will not be tolerated." Police commissioner Gurpreet Singh Bhullar said: "An FIR (first-information report) has been registered and the accused are on the run. A manhunt for them is on. I’d ask members of society also to introspect. Even if they have any serious grievance or difference of opinion with the authorities, they aren’t allowed to take law into their own hands."On Saturday, police booked LPA president Rajinder Ghai and some other members of this parents’ union, charging them with trespass, criminal intimidation, criminal conspiracy, committing an obscene act in public, and obstructing a public servant from discharging his duty. The teachers’ unions resolved to intensify their agitation of Friday if there were no arrests by that time. The Ugrahan and Dakaunda factions of the Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) have supported the teachers.Education department’s media coordinator Davinder Singh Chhina said: "We have demanded a thorough investigation of the shoe-garlanding incident and asked the teachers and school heads to confront attempts to tarnish the image of the government school systems." Democratic Teachers Front president Hardev Singh Mulanpur said on the issue of DEO’s public insult that: "The school heads need to be vigilant against anti-social elements. The protest will continue until the culprits are behind bars. The dignity of the DEO’s office needs to be restored." TNN

The Times of India

2022-01-04

Ludhiana