Hyderabad: The Telangana High Court took up a Deccan Chronicle report on the deplorable conditions of the two government-run schools for visually impaired children in the city as a suo motu writ petition and appointed senior counsel L. Ravichander as amicus curiae to assist the court as it dealt with the issue.
A division bench comprising Chief Justice Satish Chandra Sharma and Justice Abhinand Kumar Shavili asked Ravichander to visit the hostels, one located in the Old City for boys and another at Malakpet for girls, and file a detailed report by Tuesday. Following this, senior counsel Ravichander visited the hostels.
In ‘Visually impaired students in city left high and dry”, on April 4, Deccan Chronicle had reported that the schools were not maintained properly and did not have even one government appointed teacher. There was no caretaker and food was not served to students properly.
The toilets are located 300 metres away from schools and hostel premises, the report had stated.
The High Court committee for suo motu petitions took the report to the notice of Chief Justice Sharma who directed the Registry to convert it to a taken up petition.
Chief Justice Sharma, after going through report, said, “These children have no access to quality food, education or cleanliness. The toilet is located at about 300 metres away from the hostel. It has been three years now, that the hostel building in which the students were residing was demolished and there is no word from the government on the construction of a new hostel.”
Andevalli Sanjeev Kumar, special counsel for state government, told the court that the students are provided nutritious food with boiled eggs and non-veg items were being served twice. The Chief Justice interrupted his submission and said, “Please don't make cosmetic changes.. the students are forced to eat, study and sleep in the classroom itself.”
Soon after this, Chief Justice Sharma directed senior counsel Ravichander to be the amicus curiae and file a report on the hostels.
