Mail and Express train services were disrupted for over an hour on the Mumbai-Bangalore belt after teachers and principals affiliated to the Maharashtra State Permanently Unaided Schools action committee staged a rail roko at Miraj near Kolhapur Saturday afternoon. The agitators stopped the Bangalore-Ajmer Express that goes via Mumbai at noon for over an hour to get their demands fulfilled. Around 4,000 members of the action committee from all over the state participated in the rail roko.
According to Prashant Redij, secretary of the Mumbai wing of the (MSPUSAC), since the past six assembly sessions the previous and successive governments had been given empty promises to grant aided status to the more than 1,800 unaided Marathi schools and a similar number of divisions in the state. “The government has been delaying sanctioning of grants to the unaided schools as a result of which teaching and non-teaching staff of the schools find themselves with a job but no pay. The current government has initiated various delaying tactics like teacher approval drives and Aadhar number registration of teachers,” said Mr Redij.
Locals, MLCs and MLAs like Suresh Dhanorkar, Vikram Kale, Ulhas Patil, Sharad Patil, Bhagwan Salunkhe and officials of MPUSAC Vijay Gaikwad also participated in the rail roko.
